How much do you need to invest in GoMining for $1,000 a month?

It is the most asked question and the worst answered one. The usual reply is a bare figure — "about $30,000" — without saying at what efficiency, what electricity price, with which discounts, or with bitcoin at what price. Change any one of those four and the answer moves by a factor of two.

So here is the full calculation. The tables on this page recalculate themselves using the network hashrate and BTC price at the moment you are reading, with the same engine as the calculator. Come back in three months and the numbers will be different — and they will be right.

The short answer

For $1,000 net per month you need somewhere around 2,000 to 3,600 TH, which at primary-market prices comes to five figures. The range is that wide because it depends almost entirely on two things: the miner's efficiency and whether you have the maintenance discounts running.

This table was just calculated with current network data:

The large figure is total capital: miners plus tokens. In the discount column, the amount that has to sit locked in tokens is shown separately — it is not a cost, it is a frozen balance. Assumptions: a new 12 W/TH miner at $18.43/TH (price observed in the GoMining app in July 2026; it barely drops with volume — $18.15/TH at the 5,000 TH tier) and electricity at $0.05/kWh. "Maximum discounts" means 20% from the token balance + 6% VIP Elite + 3% service-button streak.

The discount does not save you money. It moves it

Look at the table again and notice something nobody mentions. With maximum discounts you need roughly half the TH for the same target. It looks like the discount halves your investment.

It does not. To earn that 20% you have to keep a GOMINING token balance locked up that grows with the size of your fleet, because the discount is calculated from days of maintenance covered. Add the two capitals together — miners plus tokens — and the total barely moves.

What changes is not how much money you need, but where it sits and what it is exposed to. Part of it stops being mining power and becomes a balance that rises and falls with the token price. The discount is certain; that capital is not.

This does not make it a bad idea. It makes it a different decision from the one it looks like. You are trading mining risk for the price risk of a token.

You are not choosing new vs second-hand. You are choosing which efficiency you pay for

Here is the part almost nobody has straight, and it moves the most money. You would assume there are several "routes" to buy hashrate — create a miner, expand the one you have, go to the secondary market — and that some are cheaper than others. That is not what happens. Looking at the real prices in the app in July 2026:

Prices observed in the GoMining app, July 2026. Creating a miner barely gets cheaper with volume: $18.15/TH at the 5,000 TH tier against $18.43 at the 1,536 TH one.

And watch that last row: the second-hand price is not a price, it is a range. The first three are set by GoMining and barely move. The secondary-market one is set by whoever is selling, so it swings constantly: on the same day you will find miners at $8/TH and others at $15/TH for the same efficiency. It rises when bitcoin rises and buyers pile in, and falls when people want out.

That makes second-hand the only one of the four options where patience is worth money. You do not buy "whatever is there": you watch the market for a few days, get a feel for the range, and move when something clearly below it shows up. The $8.34/TH used here was a good deal the day this was written — not what you will find by default.

Look at what sorts that table. It is not the purchase route: it is efficiency. Creating a 12 W/TH miner and expanding your own 12 W/TH miner cost practically the same ($18.43 vs $18.57). But expanding a 15 W/TH miner costs nearly half. GoMining does not charge you for "the route": it charges you for the watts.

So the real decision is not "new or second-hand". It is this: do I buy few efficient TH, or many TH that burn more power?

Let us make it concrete. Say you have $20,000 to invest, and the electricity at your data center is $0.05/kWh. This is what you buy and what you earn with each option:

The same $20,000 and the same electricity ($0.05/kWh) across all four options, with no maintenance discounts, to isolate the effect of price and efficiency.

Today, cheap hashrate wins. The 15 W/TH machines burn 25% more electricity every day, but at $8.34/TH you buy more than twice as much miner, and that more than covers it.

And this is where you have to be careful, because that answer is not permanent.

The exact point where it flips

The power bill is paid in dollars and does not change when bitcoin does. Income does. So the cheaper bitcoin gets, the more costs weigh — and the more it pays to have bought efficiency.

That means there is a bitcoin price at which the two options tie. With current data:

The same $20,000 from the example, invested the two extreme ways from the table above, with electricity at $0.05/kWh and no discounts. The highlighted rows are the tie point and today's market price.

Below the crossover, efficiency wins: there is less margin and the extra watts eat the difference. Above it, having more machine wins, because the reward grows across every TH while the power bill stays put.

And it is worth looking hard at the distance: bitcoin today is near that crossover, not far above it. A moderate drop flips the answer. If you buy cheap, inefficient hashrate, you are betting — whether you realise it or not — that bitcoin will not fall.

And careful generalising the other way, because this is where the trap is. Second-hand does not win by being second-hand: it wins when the price is less than half. That same 15 W/TH machine at $15/TH — a perfectly normal price on the secondary market — would lose against a new miner outright.

Put differently: the conclusion of this section is not "buy second-hand", it is "buy second-hand when you find a good deal", and that does not happen every day. Add that above 28 W/TH GoMining no longer allows efficiency upgrades, so if you buy something cheap and very inefficient, that power bill is yours forever.

Before buying, put the exact TH, W/TH and price of the listing into the calculator and compare. That is literally what it is for.

And bitcoin outweighs everything else

Look at that table again, but vertically. Efficiency and discounts move the result by 30% or 50%; the bitcoin price multiplies it or turns it negative. In the bottom rows both columns are red: down there neither option makes money, whichever you pick.

That is the whole business in one table. The electricity bill and the service fee are charged in dollars and do not care what bitcoin is worth, so below a certain price this miner loses money every day. Above it, the result takes off.

Nobody knows what the price will do, and this page is not going to pretend otherwise. The only honest thing to do is show you the number below which you lose and let you decide.

What is predictable, and usually forgotten, is that network difficulty rises: every month more machines join and your slice shrinks, historically by 1% to 3% a month. And that April 2028 brings the halving, which cuts in half the bitcoin the network issues. The projections in the calculator apply both — which is why they come out lower than other tools'.

In short

• For $1,000 a month we are talking five figures of investment, not spare change. The table above gives you today's number.
• The token discount does not reduce your capital, it moves it from miners into tokens. That is a change of risk, not a saving.
• Price per TH is set by efficiency, not by the purchase route. Creating a 12 W/TH miner or expanding your own 12 W/TH one costs the same; expanding a 15 W/TH one costs nearly half.
• The secondary market is the only price that swings, and it swings a lot. Patience is worth money there: watch it for a few days before buying, because a good deal and a bad one differ by a factor of two.
• Which one pays depends on the bitcoin price. Below the tie point efficiency wins; above it, having more machine does. And today that point is not far away.
• Bitcoin outweighs everything else, and there is a price below which this loses money every day.
• And none of this is a forecast. They are estimates built on assumptions you can change yourself.

If you want to run the numbers with yours — your specific listing, your VIP tier, your electricity price — the calculator does it live, and the fleet dashboard tracks it for you with no account and no sign-up.