The S19's Last Dance: Can the Mining Champ be Saved?
The S19 era is ending as miners adapt to hashprice & next-gen hardware
Last week’s Miner Weekly discussed the challenging situation surrounding the Antminer S19 series of bitcoin mining hardware in the current hashprice environment.
A timely news development this week was that MARA, the largest publicly traded bitcoin mining firm, closed the acquisition of a wind farm in Texas. The facility has a 240-megawatt (MW) interconnection capacity and 114 MW of nameplate wind capacity, and will specifically power MARA’s older generations of miners that might otherwise be written off or sold to the secondary market.
For those not familiar with the hardware economics: the Antminer S19 series—which includes the S19, S19 Pro, S19j Pro, and S19XP—are estimated to account for more than half of the Bitcoin network’s total computing power. They were the most powerful and efficient machines since Bitcoin’s 2020 halving until Bitmain introduced the next generation, the S21 series.
As Bitcoin’s hashprice (the measure of daily revenue per unit of bitcoin computing power) stagnates at $53 per PH/s, the S19 series can only generate between $0.075 and $0.10 per kilowatt-hour. Given that electricity rates of $0.075 per kilowatt-hour are common in the U.S. and globally, this leaves little room for healthy margins.
In its annual report, MARA disclosed that its 24.7 EH/s bitcoin mining fleet, as of January 2024, comprised nearly 80,000 S19, S19j Pro and S19k Pro units, alongside more than 133,000 S19XPs. The company reported 53 EH/s of energized hashrate as of January 2025. This implies that the S19 series could still make up about half of MARA’s mining fleet.
MARA could soon relocate 8 EH/s of the S19(j)(k) Pro miners to the Texas wind farm, which may or may not be running at full capacity contingent on energy availability and bitcoin’s hashprice. For reference, 8 EH/s of S19(j)(k) Pros would require about 240 megawatts of power capacity to run at full capacity.
Meanwhile, other public mining companies, including Iris Energy, Bitdeer, HIVE, CleanSpark, and Bit Digital, have opted to liquidate their older miners such as the S19j Pro to the secondary market since the 2024 halving. Their strategy was to sell those equipment to make room for more efficient hardware.
Some have also turned to firmware providers, seeking to salvage the value of older miners from a software approach. Luxor recently announced that Terawulf and LM Funding have deployed its LuxOS firmware aiming to boost the efficiency of their existing fleets by 10-15% without de-racking or relocating those old miners.
These strategic moves shed light on the broader dynamics of the mining hardware market, where once-dominant models are being repurposed or looking for new homes—similar to what happened with the Antminer S9s during the 2021 bull market. As more powerful and efficient machines like the S21 series are added to the network, additional S19 units may be phased out or change hands, offsetting any growth in the network’s hashrate—unless bitcoin’s price rallies toward $150,000.
For now, the network difficulty is projected to decline by about 2% in three days, following a record high two weeks ago.
Regulation News
Russian power company reports $14 million in damages from illegal crypto mining last year - The Block
Georgia County Blocks LN Energy's Bitcoin Mining Permit - TheMinerMag
Hardware and Infrastructure News
Environmental groups move to block power supply for Meta’s planned Louisiana AI data center - DCD
Core Scientific Plans to Acquire Alabama Data Center for HPC Expansion - TheMinerMag
Corporate News
HIVE Appoints Craig Tavares as President and COO of Buzz HPC to Lead Growth in HPC - Link
Northern Data Appoints John Hoffman as Group Chief Operating Officer - Link
Financial News
Jane Street Acquires 6% Stake in Bitcoin Miner Iris Energy - TheMinerMag
MARA Closes Acquisition of Wind Farm in Texas - Link
Feature
Bit Digital’s White Fiber AI/HPC Rebrand w/ Sam Tabar - The Mining Pod
Bitcoin Mining Adds $4B and 31,000 Jobs to US Economy, Report Finds - TheMinerMag
Bitcoin Mining in East Africa - The Mining Pod