Mining profitability December 2022
After a very chaotic 2022 for mining and for the economy in general, which machines are still profitable? In this monthly video update (in French), we review the ASIC miners of the moment (Bitcoin, Litecoin/Dogecoin, Kadena, CKB, Ethereum Classic), the situation of graphics cards after the Ethereum Merge, and how the hashrate of the main GPU networks has evolved.
Video from December 2022: the figures below date from that time. See "What about today?" at the end of the article.
Update: Kadena is dead. The organisation behind Kadena ceased operations in October 2025 and KDA lost more than 60% of its value within hours. The Kadena earnings and Kadena miners (Antminer KA3 and others) covered in this article are no longer relevant.
ASICs at the top of the rankings
WhatToMine had just published a new page comparing ASIC profitability. The top of the ranking was mostly made up of Bitmain machines, a brand that knows how to build very efficient miners:
- Antminer KA3, for mining Kadena, announced for release;
- Antminer K7, for mining CKB (Nervos Network), just released and actually available from January;
- Antminer HS3, a newcomer for the HNS (Handshake) cryptocurrency;
- Antminer L7, for Litecoin and Dogecoin.
Jasminer had announced a new model: the X16-Q, designed to mine at 1.8 GH/s while drawing only 630 W. The X4-Q, already available, reaches 1 GH/s for under 500 W.
Bitcoin: the S19 Pro versus the S19 XP
Bitcoin ASIC prices had fallen further. The most attractive model seemed to be the Antminer S19 Pro 100 TH, at €2,000 excluding VAT. The latest-generation S19 XP 141 TH draws about the same power and delivers 41 TH/s more, but cost almost three times as much.
With Bitcoin at around €15,600 and electricity at €0.10 per kWh, the S19 Pro was mining at a loss: at that point, it was better to buy Bitcoin directly. Over the long term, the picture changes:
- if Bitcoin returns to 50% of its all-time high, i.e. about €28,000, the payback time is 22 months, just under two years;
- if it gets back to its all-time high, around €56,000, that time becomes much shorter.
In our view, getting back to those levels in the next bull run is not science fiction at all, but it probably won't happen in 2023: more likely in 2024, or 2025 at the latest.
Kadena, CKB, Dogecoin and ETC: the other ASICs
- KA3 (Kadena): its price had come down slightly, to €8,800 excluding VAT, for a payback time of 9 months. At the prices of the last bull run, the calculation even dropped to around one month. But all of this was still theoretical: the machine had not yet been delivered.
- K7 (CKB): same situation, about 10 months to pay for itself, but not yet delivered by Bitmain.
- L7 (Litecoin/Dogecoin): just under €9,000 excluding VAT, profitable mainly thanks to Dogecoin, with more than €500 of profit per month. Payback time: 29 months (about two and a half years) at the prices of the time, 5 months at 50% of the all-time high and 2 months at the all-time high. Keep an eye, however, on the rumours that Dogecoin might move to proof of stake.
- GT Miner V66 (ETC and ETHW): 600 MH/s for 400 W and €1,100 excluding VAT, our best price/performance ratio. Calculated on Ethereum Classic, the safest bet, the payback time was 180 months: the machine is not mining at a loss, but paying it back is a long way off. At 50% of ETC's all-time high it falls to 15 months, and to 7 months at its all-time high.
Mind the noise: for home users, these machines are very loud, except for the GT Miner. The Bitmain models are rather industrial machines. Finally, with very cheap electricity, such as the €0.05 per kWh available in some mining farms (which then take their own fees), no machine was in the red any more, which encouraged miners to keep going.
Graphics cards: an upside-down ranking
For GPU mining, the situation was a bit special. On hashrate.no, at €0.10 per kWh, the GTX 1660 Super and 1660 Ti were roughly breaking even thanks to the Radiant cryptocurrency. Since almost everything was in the red, old cards (GTX 1660, 1660 Super) ended up at the top of the ranking, ahead of models that are supposed to be more efficient: the RTX 3070, a well-regarded card we like, fell behind the RTX 3060 Ti and the GTX 1660 Super.
At €0.17 per kWh, the cards holding up best were the ones that draw little power, but even the best one was losing about 12 cents a day. Some cards brought in about 50 cents a day in gross revenue, but in net profit almost everything was negative. Only the RTX 4090 stayed slightly positive, and nobody buys one to mine. We saw this as a passing phenomenon that should not last.
Hashrate of GPU networks: a slow decline
After the Ethereum Merge in September 2022, the hashrate of GPU-mineable coins had jumped. By the end of 2022, the trend was starting to reverse:
- Ethereum Classic: about 50 TH/s shortly before the Merge, more than 200 TH/s afterwards, then a slow but steady decline to 120 TH/s;
- Flux: just under 3 Msol/s before the Merge, about 6 Msol/s at the end of 2022. The increase had held up well, but the hashrate was starting to fall;
- Ravencoin: after climbing to 20 TH/s following the Merge, it had already been halved, compared with under 5 TH/s before.
What about today?
These calculations reflect the market at the end of 2022, with Bitcoin at around €15,600. Since then, cryptocurrency prices and network difficulty have changed considerably, and the April 2024 halving cut Bitcoin's block reward in half, from 6.25 to 3.125 BTC. Before any purchase, you need to redo the calculation with current figures.
To estimate a miner's profitability today, use our Bitcoin mining profitability calculator and browse our ASIC miners, including our Litecoin/Dogecoin miners. To find out more about the quiet ETC miner mentioned above, read our GT Miner V66 review.