A miner vs bitcoin, with the 2028 halving in between
Is GoMining profitable long term?
With $1,800 you can buy bitcoin or a 100 TH miner. The miner doesn't wear out and can be sold, so the right comparison adds what it mines and what you get for it at the end. Both depend on how much it earns after the 2028 halving, and that depends on how the network reacts.
The two options
A · You buy bitcoin
$1,800 → 0.0219 BTC (at $82,177)
At the end you have: those 0.0219 BTC, whatever they're worth.
B · You buy a miner
$1,800 → 100 TH at 12 W/TH ($18/TH)
At the end you have: the bitcoin it mined, after maintenance, + what you get when you sell the miner.
The miner doesn't wear out, but it's worth what it earns. So everything depends on what it earns after the halving.
What really happens at a halving
At the halving the block reward is cut in half. But the network doesn't stand still: when a machine stops paying for itself, it gets switched off, difficulty drops and every TH still running mines more. This is how the last two tests went:
April 2024 halving
What each TH earned in dollars went from $0.092 to $0.045 a day (excluding fees). At that level almost everyone still made money, so the network barely moved:
−10% for a week, back within a month
The 2026 drop
Bitcoin fell 40%, from $96,899 to $58,566. This time many machines stopped making money and were switched off:
Difficulty −16% · floor at $0.0277/TH
That floor is the key. In two years, what a TH earns per day has never gone below $0.0277: below it, machines switch off until it rises again. And GoMining's 12 W/TH miner covers its maintenance at $0.0234 ($0.0187 with the 20% discount). It sits below the floor: when other machines switch off, this one keeps earning.
The 2028 halving will bite harder than 2024's, because it starts lower: a TH earns $0.039 today, not $0.092. At today's price, the halving would take it to $0.020, below the floor. This time machines will switch off.
Three scenarios for bitcoin
- Bitcoin flat at $82,000
- Rises to $160,000 before the halving
- Rises to $160,000 around the halving
- Flat bitcoin. After the halving it loses up to $0.53 a day. In about two months the machines that don't pay off switch off and it earns again: +$0.43 a day.
- Rises to $160,000 before the halving. While price rises it earns more, but new machines arrive behind the price. At the halving it drops to −$0.27 and within a month it's back to +$0.43.
- Rises to $160,000 around the halving. The best case: price runs ahead of the network. Before the halving it reaches $3.04 a day and afterwards it never goes below zero: +$0.52.
Whatever the price does, after the halving the miner ends up earning about the same, because if bitcoin rises, more machines join to share the gain.
What you mine is bitcoin, and it rises with it
The miner pays you in bitcoin. If you hold it, everything mined so far gains value when bitcoin rises, not just what you mine from that day on. That's why, if bitcoin rises, holding beats selling every day by a wide margin:
| Bitcoin | Mined in 2 years | Selling daily | Holding |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flat | 0.0097 BTC | $795 | $795 |
| At $120,000 | 0.0101 BTC | $1,013 | $1,208 |
| At $160,000 | 0.0104 BTC | $1,234 | $1,662 |
| At $200,000 | 0.0118 BTC | $1,641 | $2,353 |
100 TH at 12 W/TH without discount, to October 2028. Maintenance is paid in dollars, so when bitcoin rises it takes less bitcoin to pay it. Throughout this article, mined bitcoin is held.
That makes the comparison clear, because both options end up as bitcoin. Buying, you have 0.0219 BTC from day one. Mining, you collect between 0.0097 and 0.0118 BTC over two years. Both amounts rise the same with price. The gap up to 0.0219 has to come from selling the miner.
Two years out: bitcoin or the miner?
In October 2028, half a year after the halving, how much would you need to sell the miner for to end up the same as if you'd bought bitcoin?
- No discount
- 20% discount
- What the miner might be worth
If bitcoin rises strongly
Buying bitcoin wins. With bitcoin at $160,000 or $200,000 you'd have to sell the miner for more than you paid (without discount) to tie: the bitcoin you bought captures the whole rise from day one.
If bitcoin stays flat or falls
The miner can win. Selling it for 44–56% of the price (27–37% with a discount) is enough, because it kept mining while bitcoin went nowhere.
The open question is the resale. Today a used miner sells for 92% of a new one, but it earns $1.57 a day now. After the halving it will earn $0.43. If buyers keep paying what they pay today per dollar of earnings (about 2.9 years of what it makes), it would be worth 25%, and it wouldn't tie in any scenario. If they pay more because they expect bitcoin to rise, it would. Nobody knows that, and it's what decides the result.
And over the last two years?
With real network data from 8 October 2024 to 8 October 2026 (bitcoin from $62,374 to $82,177) and the same miner as today:
| $1,800 in… | Mined | Total today |
|---|---|---|
| Buying bitcoin | — | $2,371 |
| Miner, no disc. | $1,391 | $3,047 |
| Miner, 20% disc. | $1,718 | $3,374 |
Miner total = what it mined (held in bitcoin and valued at $82,177) + $1,656 from selling it today. Maintenance of $2.33 a day without discount and $1.86 with 20%.
The miner would have won. There was no halving in those two years: it always made money, which is why it still sells well today. The next two years do include a halving.
What moves the result
1 · Efficiency
W/TH, today and after the halving
Daily net of 100 TH, today and with the network adjusted to the floor:
At 15 W/TH almost nothing is left, and from 20 W/TH up the halving eats the margin. W/TH tiers, explained
2 · Discount
The 20% token discount
It cuts maintenance from $2.33 to $1.86 a day: after the halving, the miner makes $0.89 instead of $0.43. It's the biggest cushion you have.
It isn't free: you need to hold GOMINING tokens, which go up and down. How it works
3 · The floor
Where machines switch off
Today it's $0.0277 per TH. By 2028 there will be more efficient machines and the floor may drop. At $0.022, with flat bitcoin, the miner would lose $0.14 a day without discount and make $0.32 with it.
It's the most uncertain part of the whole calculation.
4 · Protection
Reward Protection
If you pay maintenance in GOMINING, a day that doesn't cover maintenance is floored at zero. It protects you during the bad weeks right after the halving.
So, is it profitable long term?
- The miner survives the halving. The network adjusts: after a few weak weeks, 100 TH at 12 W/TH earn about $0.43 a day again ($0.89 with a discount), whether bitcoin rises or not.
- If bitcoin rises strongly, buying bitcoin wins: the bitcoin you bought captures the whole rise, while new machines share the miner's.
- If bitcoin doesn't rise, the miner can win, as long as you sell it for more than 44–56% of its price (27–37% with a discount).
- What matters most: 12 W/TH, the discount and what buyers pay for a used miner after the halving.
Change the price, the difficulty or your discounts and check your own case in the calculator.
Method and assumptions
- Miner: 100 TH at 12 W/TH for $1,800 ($18/TH, between the ≈$17.25 and ≈$19.00 shown in the app on 8 October 2026), $0.05/kWh, service fee of $0.0089/TH and pool factor 0.995: what GoMining actually paid over 30 days in September and October 2026, against what the network mines in theory. Mined bitcoin is held and valued at the final price.
- Starting point: 8 October 2026, bitcoin at $82,177, difficulty 132.7 T (950 EH/s) and 7-day average fees, the data from the hashprice article. Halving at block 1,050,000, around mid-April 2028.
- How the network reacts, with rules taken from 2024–2026: it follows price with a 150-day lag, plus 0.5% a month for more efficient machines (difficulty rose 50% with bitcoin +32% in two years). New machines join at most 0.15% a day (2025: +27% in six months). If what a TH earns drops below $0.0277 a day, the minimum of those two years, machines switch off, at most 0.4% a day (January 2026: −12% in a month).
- Price scenarios: bitcoin moves in a straight line to its target before the halving (day 540) or, in the "around" case, between months 15 and 21, and then stays there.
- Resale: used 100 TH at 12 W/TH sold for $16.29–16.84/TH on the GoMining marketplace in October 2026, about $1,656: 92% of the price and 2.9 years of that day's net. The 25% line applies those 2.9 years to the post-halving net.
- 2024 halving and 2026 drop: difficulty, hashrate and price from mempool.space; the 2024–2026 series is in precio-bitcoin-vs-hashprice-serie.json.
- It's a model with simple rules, not a forecast. Changing the floor or the network's speed changes the numbers, especially the post-halving net.
Frequently asked questions
Is GoMining profitable long term?
It depends on bitcoin and on the resale. A 100 TH miner at 12 W/TH makes $1.57 a day today and, in our model, survives the 2028 halving: after a few weak weeks it earns about $0.43 a day again ($0.89 with the 20% discount). Compared with buying bitcoin with the same money, bitcoin wins if it rises strongly; if it doesn't, the miner can win if you sell it for more than 44–56% of its price.
What happens to a GoMining miner after the 2028 halving?
The block reward is cut in half and, for a few weeks, a 12 W/TH miner can lose money: up to $0.53 a day per 100 TH with flat bitcoin. Then the network's less efficient machines switch off, difficulty drops and it earns again. In the 2026 drop, what a TH earns never went below $0.0277 a day, and GoMining's 12 W/TH covers its maintenance at $0.0234.
Does a GoMining miner lose value?
It doesn't wear out: it's an NFT and you can sell it on the GoMining marketplace. But its price follows what it earns. In October 2026, used 100 TH at 12 W/TH sold for about $1,656, 92% of the new price, while earning $1.57 a day. If it earns less after the halving, it will most likely sell for less.
Is it better to buy bitcoin or a GoMining miner?
If you expect bitcoin to rise a lot, buy bitcoin: with bitcoin at $160,000 in 2028, the miner would have to sell for more than it cost to tie. If you expect bitcoin to stay flat or fall, the miner can win, because it keeps mining in the meantime. Between 2024 and 2026, with no halving, the miner would have won.
If you decide to go in, get something for it
With the code 11jY4 you get +5% extra hashrate on your first miner purchase, up to a maximum of 25 TH, and a free month of VIP Platinum+ — which is itself a maintenance discount.
The code does not travel on its own, and this is what goes wrong. If you tap through on a phone, the link drops you on the app download page, and no part of the address survives that jump. You install, you sign up… and the referral was never applied, with nothing to warn you. Copy it now and paste it into your profile —gear icon top right → Account details → friend's code— before you buy your first miner. Afterwards it can no longer be applied.
The three steps, with the full in-app path, are in the calculator. This site is not affiliated with GoMining and does not give financial advice: the figures above are estimates from public data, they are scenarios, not forecasts, and guarantee no future return.
GoMining and the 2028 halving — what happens when the subsidy is cut in half and the maintenance bill isn't.