The honest math, written out
Your expected share of the network's daily coins is just a proportion: your hashrate ÷ network hashrate × 144 blocks × 3.125 BTC, minus the pool fee. Revenue converts at the live price; cost is watts × hours × your electricity rate. Everything else a fancier calculator adds is either a forecast in disguise or a sales pitch. Three truths the numbers above can't show:
- The denominator grows. Network hashrate trends up and the difficulty retargets every two weeks — today's revenue is the best day of your machine's life, on average.
- The subsidy halves. At block 1,050,000 the same share of the network pays half the coins. A machine must survive halvings to matter.
- Heat is half the business. Serious operations win on power contracts and cooling, not on hardware specs. If your electricity is above the breakeven number, no machine fixes that.
Questions people actually ask
Is bitcoin mining still profitable at home?
Almost never at residential electricity rates — the breakeven number this calculator shows you is usually well below what households pay. Modern mining is an industrial energy business; the honest home cases are cheap or stranded power, or heat-reuse setups where the warmth itself has value.
Why does the calculator ignore transaction fees?
It counts only the block subsidy (3.125 BTC per block), which is the predictable part of miner revenue. Fees add a variable bonus on top — usually a few percent, occasionally spiking much higher. Excluding them makes the estimate conservative rather than optimistic, which is the right direction for an honest tool.
How accurate is a mining calculator?
It is a snapshot, not a promise. Network hashrate grows over time, the difficulty retargets every two weeks, the price moves constantly, and halvings cut the subsidy every four years. Treat the output as today’s physics, valid until the network changes — which it will.
What is the difference between solo mining and pool mining?
Expected revenue is the same; variance is not. Solo, a small miner might wait decades to hit one block that pays everything at once. In a pool, you earn a steady fraction daily in exchange for a small fee. The calculator models pool mining, which is how essentially everyone small mines.