CoinShares sheds light on the evolving economics of Bitcoin mining following the network’s 2024 halving and increased hashrate. The firm reveals that average cash cost to mine a bitcoin among publicly traded mining firms jumped sharply by 47%, from $55,950 in Q3 2024 to nearly $82,162 in Q4. Excluding Hut 8, the average cost was slightly lower at $75,767, but still represents a significant 35% increase quarter-over-quarter. When non-cash expenses are factored in, the total average cost reached a staggering $137,018 per bitcoin – exceeding Bitcoin’s current market price of around $95,000. Despite this financial challenge, many miners have managed to remain profitable with rising Bitcoin prices and strategic efficiency improvements. However, an increasing shift in investor sentiment is evident as valuation multiples among mining firms have been squeezed, signaling a growing view that Bitcoin mining operates on a net-zero basis – where one miner’s gain is another’s loss. To diversify their revenue streams, many companies are turning to data center infrastructure and high-performance computing (HPC) hosting.