Bitcoin’s Projected Difficulty Cut Still Leaves Older S19 Miners Below Break-Even

By Isaac • November 10, 2026 3:14 pm •

Bitcoin miners may get a meaningful break from the network’s next difficulty adjustment. For older machines, however, the math still looks brutal.

A projected 6.5% difficulty reduction would increase expected revenue per unit of computing power by roughly 7%, assuming Bitcoin’s price, the block subsidy and transaction fees do not change.

Even that relief would not make two older Antminer S19 variants profitable on electricity priced at five cents per kilowatt-hour.

That is the central finding in a new CryptoSlate analysis built around a Hashrate Index projection dated November 9. The estimate put Bitcoin mining difficulty at 148.36 trillion, spot hashprice at $31.89 per petahash per second per day, and the next adjustment near November 13.