Bitmain just slashed mining rig prices, proving the market’s oldest “Bitcoin rule” is officially dead

Bitmain cut prices on Bitcoin mining rigs on Dec. 23 after miner revenue per unit of hashrate fell in November.

The discounts, which extend to current-generation hydro and immersion products, are landing in a cycle in which Bitcoin’s price strength has not translated into the kind of mining-margin expansion that previously drove hardware scarcity and rapid markups.

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According to TheMinerMag, a container bundle for the S19 XP+ Hydro (about 19 J/TH) comes in near $4/TH, with shipping slated to begin in January 2026.

The same report cites internal price lists showing quotes as low as $3/TH for some S19 Hydro variants and around $7–$8/TH for newer S21 immersion or hydro models before coupons.

Bitmain has paired some of those offers with hosting packages, with power rates cited around 5.5–7.0¢/kWh plus about a 0.3¢ management fee across multiple geographies.

Compressed hashprice is rewriting miner economics and ASIC demand

The price action reflects a basic constraint: miner demand clears on payback math when hashprice stays compressed.

Luxor’s November 2025 lookback puts USD hashprice at an average of $39.82/PH/day, with a print of $35.06 on Nov. 22.

In the same monthly review, Luxor said transaction fees were a small share of rewards during the period, limiting relief for operators as network difficulty averaged about 153.33T.

That combination changes buyer behavior in ways that blunt “BTC up equals ASICs up.”

Hashprice is effectively revenue per unit of hashrate, and Luxor frames it as daily income per PH before costs.

At $40/PH/day, gross revenue works out to about $0.040/TH/day because one PH equals 1,000 TH.

A 200 TH/s rig would gross about $8 per day at that level.

If the machine runs around 19 J/TH, power draw is roughly 3.8 kW (19 J/TH times 200 TH/s), or about 91.2 kWh per day.

At $0.06/kWh, a midpoint within the hosting price band cited by TheMinerMag, energy cost is about $5.47 per day.

That leaves about $2.53 per day before facility fees, repairs, downtime, pool fees, and curtailment.

At a hardware cost of $4/TH, a 200 TH machine costs about $800, putting a simple payback near 316 days on that margin.

When purchasers are underwriting close to a year of payback before routine operating frictions, the clearing price for rigs becomes tied to IRR thresholds rather than scarcity narratives.

That framing also helps explain why discounts can extend to newer products without immediately triggering a higher repricing.

There is also a supply-side shift underway

Earlier cycles saw long lead times and fragmented distribution amplify shortages, which let original equipment manufacturers and resellers reprice inventory quickly during demand spikes.

This cycle resembles a more industrial market, where manufacturers manage turnover amid competition from the secondary market and from multiple product tiers.

TheMinerMag characterized the breadth of Bitmain’s cuts as a response to weak economics and tighter competition, rather than a single promotional window.

The gap from the prior mania remains visible in historical comparisons of $/TH pricing.

According to Digital Mining Solutions, hardware in the 25–38 J/TH range traded around $105/TH in November 2021, versus around $12/TH by March 2024, even as Bitcoin printed an all-time high during that period.

The comparison is not a perfect apples-to-apples match across generations and form factors, but it captures the directional change in “hashrate purchasing power” that miners face when network hashrate and difficulty re-rate faster than fee income.

Bitmain’s packaging of hosting with machines also points to where scarcity has migrated.

Bundling shifts the sales pitch from a single capex decision to an end-to-end operating proposition: power procurement, deployment, and operations.

In a market where efficient megawatts are hard to secure at predictable pricing, power access can be the binding constraint.

That makes hosting partnerships and containerized deployments a lever to convert price-sensitive buyers.

Capital allocation outside pure Bitcoin mining is another factor shaping marginal demand for ASIC expansion.

Public-market narratives have increasingly rewarded miners for positioning data centers toward AI and high-performance compute rather than maximizing hashrate at any cost.

Several miners have pursued or evaluated AI-related data center strategies to diversify revenue.

Investor attention around large AI data center transactions has also buoyed some miner equities, reinforcing incentives to direct incremental capex to infrastructure that can serve multiple revenue streams.

Forward pricing has reinforced caution on near-term mining economics

Luxor’s November review noted USD-denominated forward hashprice for December 2025 through April 2026 fell by about 16–18% from Nov. 3 to Dec. 1, while BTC-denominated forwards moved higher.

That divergence matters for operators that pay expenses in dollars.

Even with improved BTC terms, the day-to-day budget constraint is USD cash flow, and the forward curve has reflected continued pressure.

Whether ASIC pricing regains its prior-cycle beta now depends less on Bitcoin’s tape and more on a sustained change in fee contribution and net hashprice after difficulty response.

In the absence of a durable fee regime that lifts revenue per TH for months rather than days, buyers have reason to treat $/TH as a payback instrument.

That can push OEMs toward lower entry costs, shorter delivery risk, and bundled operating support.

Bitmain’s January 2026 shipping window for its discounted bundles is set to test how much of the market will commit to expansion at sub-$10/TH pricing under a $35–$50/PH/day hashprice band.

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