Mining profitability remains the core metric in cryptocurrency mining.
How do you evaluate daily earnings from mining a specific coin? What factors affect mining profits? While numerous profit calculators and estimation tools exist, what methodologies do they use?
This guide explores mining profit calculations using BTC and ETH as primary examples.
Key Mining Concepts to Understand
Before calculating profits, familiarize yourself with these terms:
- Difficulty: Measures how hard it is to find a valid new block. Higher difficulty means more computational effort is required.
- Hashrate: The number of mining results (shares) a miner can submit per second (e.g., H/s, TH/s).
- Block Reward: The cryptocurrency reward given to miners for discovering a new block—the primary income source.
- 24h Estimated Mining Revenue: A theoretical daily earnings projection based on hashrate and network difficulty, excluding luck variables.
Since solo mining at low hashrate may take years to find a block, most miners join mining pools to combine resources and share rewards proportionally.
Mining Profit Formulas
Parameters Defined:
- P: Daily theoretical mining profit
- D: Current network difficulty
- H: Miner’s hashrate (hash/sec)
- R: Block reward
1. Bitcoin (BTC) Mining Calculation
Bitcoin’s difficulty is scaled so that "1" requires ~2³² hashes theoretically to find a block.
Formula:
P = R × (H × 86,400) / (D × 2³²) Example:
- Difficulty (D): 6,379,265,451,411
- Block reward (R): 12.5 BTC
- Hashrate (H): 1 Ph/s (1×10¹⁵ H/s)
Result:
P = 0.03941788 BTC/day
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2. Ethereum (ETH) Mining Calculation
Ethereum’s difficulty directly represents the required hashes per block.
Formula:
P = R × (H × 86,400) / D Example:
- Difficulty (D): 1,842.67 TH (1.84267×10¹⁸)
- Block reward (R): 2 ETH
- Hashrate (H): 1 Gh/s (1×10⁹ H/s)
Result:
P = 0.09377696 ETH/day
FAQs
Q1: Does mining difficulty change over time?
Yes. Bitcoin adjusts difficulty every 2,016 blocks (~2 weeks), while Ethereum recalculates per block.
Q2: How do pool fees affect profits?
Most pools charge 1–3% of earnings. Deduct this from your estimated revenue.
Q3: What hardware is best for mining ETH post-Merge?
ETH transitioned to Proof-of-Stake (PoS). GPU mining is obsolete; consider staking instead.
Q4: Why is my actual profit lower than calculated?
Real-world factors like electricity costs, hardware downtime, and pool luck variance reduce earnings.
👉 Explore cost-effective mining setups
Final Notes
- POW coins like Litecoin follow similar principles. Always verify formulas against updated blockchain protocols.
- Use reputable calculators like WhatToMine for real-time estimates.
- Share your mining experiences or questions in the comments!
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