Mining News | ONEMINERS NEWS DESK
Twelve months after the record high, the price is lower, the network is smaller, and the miners still standing all have one thing in common.
By Michal Beno, CEO, OneMiners
6 October 2026 · 4 min read
One year on
Bitcoin set its all-time high of $126,080 on 6 October 2025. Today it trades near $83,722, about 34% lower. Mining difficulty is down about 15% from its peak, so revenue per machine fell less than the price did.
$126,080
all-time high, 6 Oct 2025
$83,722
price, 30 Sep 2026
-34%
price vs the peak
-15%
difficulty vs its peak
CoinGecko and blockchain.info, read 30 September 2026. Difficulty peak of 155.97T set in October 2025.
It has been a hard year. Four days after the record, the market went through one of the biggest liquidation days in crypto history. Bitcoin spent most of 2026 in a downtrend and bottomed near $57,700 before a strong third quarter lifted it back above $80,000.
Lesson 1: Price is weather. Power is physics.
Nobody could have planned around the drop from $126K. What miners could plan was their electricity bill, which is 75 to 85% of the ongoing cost of running a Bitcoin miner. The operators who stayed profitable through the lows were the ones paying the least for power.
Lesson 2: The network corrects itself
When price falls, high-cost miners switch off and difficulty drops. That happened twice in 2026, with cuts of -11.2% in February and -10.1% in June. Difficulty now sits at 132.76 trillion, and the machines still running each earn a bigger share of every block.
Price and difficulty, one year after the peak
Today's level as a share of the October 2025 high
Lesson 3: Efficiency decides who survives
At today's hashprice of about $40 per PH per day, the break-even power price swings widely by machine. A modern 9.5 J/TH machine breaks even at about $0.175 per kWh. An older 23 J/TH machine needs power below $0.072.
Break-even electricity price by Bitcoin miner
| Bitcoin miner | Efficiency | Break-even power |
|---|---|---|
 Antminer S23 Hyd 580T |
9.5 J/TH | $0.175/kWh |
 Antminer S21 XP Hyd 473T |
12 J/TH | $0.139/kWh |
 Antminer S21 Pro 245T |
15 J/TH | $0.111/kWh |
 Antminer S19k Pro 110T |
23 J/TH | $0.072/kWh |
Break-even = hashprice / (24 x J/TH) at $39.96 per PH per day, 30 September 2026.
Lesson 4: The miners who left made room for the ones who stayed
Some large public miners moved power into AI data centres this year, and network hashrate slipped to a three-week low in late September. Every exit shrinks the competition for the same 450 new Bitcoin a day. For a miner on cheap power, a smaller network is a better network.
THE ONEMINERS VIEW
The record high was a headline. The year after it was the real test, and the result is clear: cheap, fixed electricity is the one advantage a downturn cannot take away. OneMiners publishes every rate on the hosting centers page, from $0.048 per kWh and down to $0.0364 on a 7-year prepaid contract.
START WITH ONEMINERS
Check what your Bitcoin miner earns at today's hashprice.
Open the mining calculatorSee hosting locationsSOURCES AND DATA
- All-time high and price: CoinGecko, 30 September 2026
- Difficulty and difficulty history: blockchain.info; CoinMarketCap Academy, June 2026
- 2026 price low: Fidelity's Jurrien Timmer via CoinDesk, 29 September 2026
- Hashrate low: CryptoQuant via KuCoin News, 27 September 2026
- Hosting rates: published OneMiners location pages
Michal Beno
CEO of OneMiners, the global Bitcoin mining hosting and hardware platform with 15 published hosting locations, 7-year fixed electricity contracts and a 7-year hardware warranty. He writes about the economics of industrial Bitcoin mining.
Informational only, not financial advice. Figures are a snapshot from public market data and news reports as of 30 September 2026 and can change quickly. Crypto prices can fall as well as rise. No return is offered or implied. Do your own research.
