Workers check crypto mining racks at an industrial mining facility. (Photo by DANIEL DUARTE/AFP via … More
Despite the harshest profit squeeze in half a decade, the business of mining bitcoin on U.S. soil is consolidating and once again gathering momentum.
Washington has recognized bitcoin’s proof‑of‑work as a strategic resource, state legislatures are offering regulatory clarity, manufacturers are shipping more efficient machines, and entrepreneurs are inventing new revenue models that couple mining with digital collectibles or flexible‑load grid services. These converging forces explain why network hashrate, the computational power used to process transactions, continues marching toward the zettahash era, when the network achieves a strength of performing 10 sextillion calculations per second. This is a staggering technical feat and indicates a ultra-secure with profitable incentives.
On the other hand, hashprice – the amount of bitcoin that miners expect to earn – has been languishing in recent months. Publicly traded mining companies are dumping inventory to stay operational. Tariffs are expected to impact equipment costs. Bitcoin’s price has been trading sideways for the better part of a quarter. And yet, mining difficulty, which is the prime indicator of industry health, continues to rise.
U.S. Policy Tailwinds Propel Bitcoin Mining
The clearest inflection came on 6 March 2025, when President Donald Trump signed an executive order focused on bitcoin, stating that “there is a strategic advantage to being among the first nations to create a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve.” The order refers to bitcoin as “digital gold.” It also directs the U.S. Treasury to hold forfeited coins and identify budget‑neutral accumulation methods.
At the state level, Arkansas had already laid groundwork with the Data Centers Act of 2023, which classifies mining as protected industrial activity and curtails local zoning interference. Oklahoma followed with a Commercial Digital Asset Mining Act in 2024, granting sales‑tax relief on rigs and power contracts. Meanwhile, Texas’s updated HB 1666 balanced custody standards with grid‑integration incentives, evidence that states view miners as high‑load customers, not solely as environmental transgressors.
Federal industrial policy emphasizing domestic chip production is also supportive of bitcoin mining. This past summer, the fintech company Block’s Proto team signed an agreement to supply Core Scientific with 3 nanometer modular rigs and publish design files so other operators can manufacture such equipment locally. By reducing supply‑chain risk and circumventing import tariffs on Chinese hardware that might soon surpass 100%, this deal may finally result in American bitcoin mining hardware being used at scale. Such a shift would have seemed far fetched by industry veterans just a few years ago.
Environmental objections, long expressed by policymakers as a key reason to reject bitcoin, are becoming more difficult to defend. A recent Duke University review concluded that flexible bitcoin mining loads could absorb up to 76 gigawatts of new demand with minimal curtailment, reducing the need for peaker plants (power plants that handle the spiking demand for electricity during peak hours). The study also showed bitcoin mining helps to accelerate renewable energy build-out. The Bitcoin Policy Institute’s survey of 10 North American miners found real‑time curtailment rates between 5% and 31%, demonstrating that miners routinely shed load during price spikes.
The Technology And Business Models Reshaping Mining Economics
Network horsepower averaged 910 exahashes per second in mid‑April, up 44% year‑on‑year, even though bitcoin traded sideways over the same period. By some measures, the average all‑in U.S. production expense sits at about $92,000 per coin, only 7% above the current market quote. This is a narrow margin, but a bearable one for firms that are not over-leveraged. The continued rise in hashrate in the face of sideways bitcoin price movement and relatively high interest rates may indicate that miners are willing to part with long-term capital (including portions of their bitcoin treasuries) to continue operating. Miners taking this approach are betting they will be able to benefit from a rapid increase in bitcoin’s price.
The current wave innovation is not confined to semiconductors. At least one such project, called Hashrate Hackers, seeks to tie Ordinal inscriptions to real megawatts and share monthly mining revenue with token holders. This would capitalize on the popularity of speculative digital collectibles, often called NFTs, to support the expansion of mining infrastructure. Blockware, which is backing the initiative, says the proceeds will be channeled to its 500 MW infrastructure pipeline, demonstrating how non-traditional capital can finance mining expansion without diluting shareholders.
Meanwhile, the stablecoin company Tether announced in April that it would direct both existing and future hashrate to Bitcoin Core developer Luke Dashjr’s Ocean pool. Dashjr’s open source DATUM protocol lets individual miners construct their own block templates rather than outsource that task to a small cartel of pools. This addresses a subtle but critical security vector: block template construction. Today, only three mining pools assemble nearly two‑thirds of all blocks, which means they get to decide which transactions to mine. Censorship risk thus migrates from edge to hub. Ocean’s model restores decisionmaking power to the periphery, hardening the network against regulatory capture.
Solo mining is a key trend that has been gaining steam this year. Solving a block with a single, small computer remains statistically improbable, yet the cultural effect of small miners is outsized. On March 10, 2025, a solo miner using a Bitaxe 204 Ultra – a compact, open-source ASIC miner priced around $150 – mined block #887,212 and earned roughly $263,000. Operating at approximately 480 gigahash per second, this person secured a reward of 3.15 BTC. Wins like these are inspiring hobbyists and demonstrate that solo mining, while unlikely to alter hashrate distribution materially in the short term, could one day counterbalance centralized mining operations.
Why Hashrate Climbs Even When Margins Compress
In the current environment, the economics of mining are undeniably tight, with a 28% drop in hashprice since January, hovering near $44 per petahash per day. At these levels, many mining businesses are barely breaking even. A review by TheMinerMag of publicly available data released by 15 publicly-traded bitcoin mining companies showed those miners liquidated more than 40% of their March production, the steepest sell‑rate since the 2024 halving.
Yet selling inventory is not the same as forgoing expansion. Hardware orders in late March reached new records, indicating operators are swapping out inefficient rigs rather than capitulating. When mining companies invest in better hardware, even with the price of bitcoin slumps, that’s a sign shareholders are quite bullish about the opportunity for future profits.
Three factors explain the apparent contradiction. First, network‑wide efficiency gains mean each incremental terahash costs less to power than the one it replaces, so aggregate difficulty can rise even while average margins fall. Second, flexible‑load contracts allow miners to monetize capacity by curtailing power consumption during peak pricing events, a hedge unavailable to most data‑center tenants. Third, the policy backdrop has changed. With the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve in place and bipartisan state support, operators foresee lower headline risk and assign a higher terminal value to U.S.-based hashpower.
However, headwinds do persist. Tariffs on Chinese imports may soon exceed 100% once shipping and compliance costs are included, a burden highlighted by Luxor CEO Nick Hansen, who called the environment “literally chaos every day.” Rising competition from AI hyperscalers for megawatt‑scale data centers adds another layer of price pressure. On the other hand, some analysts, including those as DCA Asset Management Inc., suggest mining infrastructure could pivot to more generalized high‑performance compute in future cycles.
All things considered, the strategic logic of mining bitcoin in the U.S. is more compelling than ever before. The White House executive order effectively positions bitcoin as a reserve commodity, aligning miners with national energy policy rather than against it. State statutes offer durable protections of property rights. Open‑source hardware and novel business models are broadening the capital base. Most importantly, the network’s self‑adjusting difficulty means that every additional watt spent on bitcoin mining improves the security of the Bitcoin Network irrespective of spot price. As long as energy remains abundant and investors believe in long‑run appreciation, hashrate will continue to rise.
Bitcoin mining margins may be thin, but structural changes in the U.S. economy favor the bitcoin mining industry in the medium term. Regulatory recognition, domestic chip production, innovative financing, and a push toward decentralized block construction have set the stage for the next growth phase in American mining.