This section explains key concepts, assumptions, and how the calculator applies them over time.
Price & scenarios
What it is: BTC spot price converts mined BTC into revenue in USD.
How it affects results: Higher price increases USD revenue; it does not change the amount of BTC mined.
Difficulty & production
What it is: Network difficulty represents how hard it is to mine a block. As difficulty increases, expected BTC mined per day decreases for the same hashrate.
How it is applied: Difficulty growth is applied over time (monthly) based on the selected annual rate.
Note on halving: Bitcoin halving is not modeled as a discrete event. Its impact is assumed to be reflected indirectly through the selected price and difficulty scenarios.
Pool fee
What it is: The pool keeps a percentage of mined rewards.
How it is applied: BTC received is reduced by the pool fee.
Maintenance & hosting
What it is: Operating overhead for maintenance/hosting expressed as a share of revenue.
Note: Electricity is calculated separately as energy OPEX.
Uptime
What it is: The fraction of time the miners are actually running.
How it is applied: Both production (BTC) and energy (kWh) scale linearly with uptime.
Energy cost (OPEX)
What it is: Electricity cost is the largest component of OPEX for most mining setups.
How it is applied: Monthly kWh is computed from total power, uptime, and days per month, then multiplied by the electricity tariff. If an energy trend is selected, the tariff changes over time.
Scenario modifiers
What it is: Multipliers applied to the selected annual growth rates for price and difficulty (optimistic/base/pessimistic).
Why it exists: Enables fast “what-if” comparisons while keeping the same base inputs.
HODL revenue recognition
What it is: When a HODL strategy is selected, mined BTC is accumulated and sold at the end of the selected period.
How it is applied: For modeling purposes, sale proceeds are allocated evenly across the preceding period rather than recognized as a single lump-sum event.
Why it matters: This supports consistent daily/period calculations for taxes, depreciation, and cashflow. Depreciation is applied only to the allocated revenue within each period; unused depreciation is not carried forward.
Taxes
What it is: An effective tax rate applied to results in the “after taxes” views.
Important: This is a simplified representation; tax treatment can vary significantly by jurisdiction and accounting method.
Depreciation timing note: Unused depreciation is not carried forward; if revenue is deferred, the depreciation benefit for that period is lost.
Discounting & NPV
What it is: The discount rate (annual) reflects the time value of money and risk. Future cashflows are worth less than cashflows today.
How it affects results: Higher discount rates reduce NPV and make discounted payback occur later.
CAPEX & payback
CAPEX is the upfront investment (hardware and associated costs, if included).
Payback is when cumulative net cashflow becomes non-negative (simple or discounted, depending on the metric).
Time to mine first 1 BTC
What it is: Time from the start until cumulative mined BTC reaches 1.0 BTC.
How it is calculated: We accumulate monthly net BTC. If 1.0 BTC is reached inside a month, we linearly interpolate the day within that month.
Glossary
- CAPEX: upfront investment.
- OPEX: ongoing operating costs (energy, maintenance/hosting as configured).
- Uptime: percentage of time miners run.
- Difficulty: network difficulty affecting BTC/day.
- NPV: net present value (discounted cashflows).
- Discount rate: annual rate used for discounting future cashflows.