What it costs to mine a bitcoin, and what a cost figure leaves out

A miner reports two costs, and they answer different questions.

A bitcoin miner turns electricity into bitcoin. The first cost anyone asks about is the electricity, and most companies publish it: the power bill, plus hosting fees where the machines sit in someone else's building, divided by the bitcoin mined in the period. On this site that is the direct cost per bitcoin. It answers one question: what did it cost, in cash, to keep the machines running for each coin.

The second cost is called all-in, and it answers a different question: what did the coin cost once the other things the company counts are added. The trouble is that each company decides what to add. One adds the wear on its machines. Another adds financing. None of the three that publish an all-in figure adds the salaries of the people who run the company. So an all-in figure is only readable next to its definition, which is why the table below carries each company's own words.

This site also keeps a definition of its own, on the methodology page: mining costs plus payroll, general and administrative expense and depreciation, divided by bitcoin mined. No company on file reports that figure. Every all-in figure below is the company's own, marked as such.

What each company puts inside its figure.

Three companies publish an all-in cost per bitcoin. Here is each one, with the period it covers and what the filing says it includes and excludes.

Three things to notice. The direct figures sit within about 9,000 dollars of each other. The all-in figures sit within about 6,000 dollars of each other, but that is partly coincidence, because they do not include the same things. And every one of them leaves out SG&A, which matters for the last section of this article.

Three more companies publish a direct cost and no all-in figure. Each one defines even the direct figure a little differently, and the filing says how.

Set each cost against the bitcoin the company earned.

A cost per bitcoin means something only against what a bitcoin brought in during the same period. Two of the three companies state that figure in the same filing: CleanSpark's average revenue per bitcoin mined was 71,692 dollars in its quarter, and Riot's production value was 71,667 dollars per bitcoin mined in its quarter. TeraWulf's 10-K does not state a comparable figure, so its row below is blank rather than guessed.

Read the CleanSpark row. On energy alone, each bitcoin cost about 62 percent of what it brought in: a cash margin. Once the wear on the machines and the financing are added, each bitcoin cost 134 percent of what it brought in: a loss, on that basis, of about 24,600 dollars a coin. Both statements are true at once, and they describe different things. The first is the cash the quarter produced. The second is what is left after the machines that produced it are being paid for.

So the answer to "is this company mining at a loss?" is: on which basis, in which period. In its latest quarter CleanSpark mined at a cash margin on energy and at a loss after depreciation. Riot reads the same way. Neither figure says anything about the next quarter, because both move with the bitcoin price, the network's total hashrate, and the company's own machines.

Where the salaries are, and why cutting them would not move these figures.

Officer pay is booked in selling, general and administrative expense, SG&A, and every all-in figure on file leaves SG&A out. That means the question "what would the all-in cost be if the team paid itself less?" has a plain answer for these three companies: it would be exactly the same. The pay is not in the number. What would move is net income, which is where SG&A lands.

The pay is not small. CleanSpark's proxy lists five named executive officers whose 2025 totals, as printed in its Summary Compensation Table, add to about 133 million dollars, most of it stock awards. None of that is in the 96,277 dollars. Under this site's own definition, which adds payroll and general and administrative expense, it would be, and the cost per bitcoin would read higher than the company's figure by however many bitcoin that year's payroll is spread across.

That is the practical use of knowing the definition. A company that reports a low all-in cost has not necessarily got low costs; it may have drawn the line around a narrower set of them. The people page for each company lists what each officer was paid, year by year, so the amount left outside the cost figure is always one click from it.

How to read any cost-per-bitcoin claim.

Five questions settle most of it, and the filing answers all five if you know to ask.

The cost brief on the Companies page keeps every one of these figures with its definition in the company's own words, and sets each against the bitcoin price on the day the research pass read it.