The shift comes as hashprice — a key industry metric measuring expected mining revenue per unit of computing power — hovers in the low $30/PH/s range, near all-time lows. At those levels, margins are either compressed or outright negative, especially for operators running older, less efficient fleets or paying higher power costs.
But the company is not repeating the hashrate-at-all-costs playbook of the previous cycle. Matt Prusak, president and interim CFO of ABTC, told TheEnergyMag that its focus is on quality growth under current market conditions.
But for private operators without comparable access to capital, the divergence in strategy is increasingly shaped by one of the industry’s oldest variables: power costs.
At that level, even less efficient machines remain profitable. With hashprice around $30/PH/s, a miner paying $0.02/kWh can sustain fleet efficiencies of roughly 60 J/TH. McDonough said this enables the company to acquire older-generation equipment at lower upfront costs while maintaining margins, especially as ASIC prices have fallen alongside hashprice.
Absent ultra-low-cost power, miner operators are also turning to operational optimization to preserve margins.
The goal is to optimize output from existing infrastructure. Luxor says internal benchmarks show an 8% to 14% improvement in profitability compared with traditional on/off curtailment strategies.
The shift toward software reflects a broader recalibration across the industry. With hashprice under pressure, upgrading to the latest generation of machines often requires capital outlays that are difficult to justify on a standalone return basis.
Instead, operators are focusing on extracting better margins from existing fleets — gaining incremental efficiency wherever possible.
