Even if Bitcoin rises 30% a year this renewable mining model still loses money as hashrate keeps pace

Bitcoin trades near $63,600, below the lowest Bitcoin price researchers tested against a modeled wind-powered mining operation in a new Energy Economics study.

At that price level, their model shows no payback within six years under any curtailment scenario they ran.

The study, by researchers at the Technological University of the Shannon, models a 20 MW Bitcoin mine connected to a hypothetical 100 MW Irish wind farm, using hourly market data from 2024.

Even with 25% of the wind farm’s output curtailed, the modeled project fails to recover its investment inside the six-year equipment horizon once Bitcoin’s price falls to €60,000.

The bullish case comes first

The 20 MW mine captures 83.1% of the wind farm’s annual dispatch-down energy, the electricity Irish grid operators instruct offline because transmission lines cannot carry it. Total system revenue climbs from €22.2 million to €29.2 million, a 32% increase, and the wind farm’s effective capacity factor rises from 29% to 32%.

Scaling the mine to 30 MW pushes absorption to 93.4% of curtailed power and system revenue to €31.1 million.

The researchers find diminishing returns beyond that range, and a larger installation incurs significant hardware costs while capturing only a small amount of additional curtailed electricity.

At €100,000 per BTC, the modeled 20 MW project pays back in 2.13 to 3.56 years, depending on how much wind is curtailed. At €80,000, payback stretches to 3.44 years at 25% curtailment and 4.07 years at 20%, while every lower-curtailment scenario misses the six-year window entirely.

At €60,000, none of the tested curtailment levels, from 5% up to 25%, produces a payback inside six years. Bitcoin’s current price sits below even that threshold.

The number Bitcoin miners need to beat

The study’s central finding is a six-year sensitivity table that plots Bitcoin’s price growth against global hashrate growth for the same 20 MW project.

Every point along the diagonal, where both variables grow at the same annual rate, lands on an identical result. Net present value is negative €10.1 million, with a negative 5.7% return.

That holds whether both grow at 5%, 15%, or 30% a year. A Bitcoin rally that size normally reads as spectacular, while it produces the same loss as a flat, stagnant market in this model.

A fixed mining installation earns Bitcoin according to its share of the entire network’s hashrate, and that share shrinks every time a rival adds machines.

The project only turns profitable when Bitcoin’s growth outpaces hashrate growth by a wide margin. Bitcoin compounding at 30% annually, with hashrate compounding at 15%, yields a positive net present value of €7.7 million.

Narrow that gap to 30% against 25%, and the project falls back to negative €5.1 million.

The researchers tested older Antminer S9 hardware, running at roughly 98 joules per terahash, and found it uneconomic under every 2024 scenario they modeled. Every viable case in the study runs on the newer Antminer S21 Hydro at 16 joules per terahash.

The researchers built the model on 2024 Irish electricity prices, a six-year equipment horizon, perfect foresight on future prices, and an Irish private-wire regulatory framework that has not yet been finalized.