Bitcoin climbed past JPMorgan’s projected $85,000 production expense following a 280-day span underneath it, which may alleviate liquidation pressure among miners.
Bitcoin’s recent surge past JPMorgan’s calculated production threshold of roughly $85,000 might offer respite to miners and mitigate the danger of compulsory liquidations if the trend holds, according to the institution’s strategists.
Bitcoin spent 280 days trailing beneath the anticipated average expense required to mint a single BTC before climbing back above it during the recent weekly surge, the JPMorgan research team headed by Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou detailed in a Wednesday publication. The asset’s valuation has since experienced a minor retraction and currently changes hands near $84,100.
The financial experts noted that bitcoin’s manufacturing expense has historically served as a “soft floor” for its market value. Whenever bitcoin trades under that threshold for an extended duration, operators burdened by higher electricity and hardware expenses can drift into unprofitability. Consequently, they may unload additional bitcoin, power down their hardware, or exit the ecosystem altogether.
The strategists mentioned that bitcoin’s upward movement despite the U.S. Senate’s failure to advance the Clarity Act aligned with investors liquidating short positions, just as the strategists highlighted in the preceding week.
Relief for bitcoin miners
Bitcoin miners have navigated the prolonged stretch of depressed margins by relocating units to territories offering lower-cost power, disposing of aging rigs, and placing specific hardware into standby mode, the researchers stated, adding that they have similarly scrapped or recycled underperforming machinery.
The prior occasion where bitcoin persisted under its estimated production expense for a comparable timeframe occurred in 2018, maintaining that status for roughly 224 days, the experts observed.
Slumping valuations compelled higher-cost operators to halt operations, compressing the Bitcoin network’s computational power and mining complexity. The bitcoin mining sector is presently larger and more institutionalized than it was back in 2018, though the underlying adjustment mechanism remains identical as high-cost operators withdraw, the strategists explained.
“To the extent it is sustained, this new backdrop should provide relief to bitcoin miners, thus reducing the risk of forced selling by them,” the analysts stated.
Bitcoin miners shift toward AI as hash rate falls
Bitcoin extraction is additionally undergoing a broader pivot toward artificial intelligence, the team remarked. As operators redirect portions or the entirety of their infrastructure toward AI computations, expansion in the Bitcoin network’s hash rate has decelerated. The hash rate has dropped roughly 19% from its record high achieved last October, whereas mining difficulty has receded by approximately 15%, the strategists reported.
Numerous publicly traded mining corporations have dialed back their computational expansion projections as long-term AI agreements accelerate the migration away from bitcoin minting.
The analysts explained that artificial intelligence enterprises are offering substantial premiums to secure electricity and data center facilities already provisioned for heavy computational workloads. With bitcoin valuations remaining subdued throughout much of the current year, operators have gravitated toward AI revenue streams that offer greater predictability, enhanced stability, and superior returns per megawatt compared to minting income.
As a result, publicly listed firms are surrendering market share in bitcoin minting operations to private and state-backed entities, the experts noted.
“From a bitcoin perspective, this can reduce excess hashrate growth and help prevent the network from becoming ‘too crowded,’ i.e., avoiding concentration risk. At the same time, by flattening the trend in the bitcoin hash rate, this structural shift by miners to AI implies that the bitcoin production cost would rise more slowly going forward, outside halving events,” the analysts stated.
The Funding newsletter: Stay on top of the latest crypto VC funding and M&A deals, news, and trends with my free bi-monthly newsletter, The Funding. Sign up here!
Originally published at https://www.theblock.co/news/markets/2026-09-24-jpmorgan-bitcoin-production-cost-miners-relief-416283.
