Crypto 101 · Proof of work
Mining Profitability: How to Estimate What a Miner Earns
Abstract
Whether mining pays depends on how much of the network you own, how many coins the network issues per day, the coin's price, the pool's fee and, above all, your electricity cost. We give the formula, work an example for a Scrypt ASIC, embed a live calculator using Scrypt Wallet's own node data and list the ways real results differ from an estimate.
Keywords: mining profitability, mining calculator, ASIC, electricity cost, break-even
1. In plain English
Mining profit is income minus cost. Income comes from your slice of the coins the network creates each day. Cost is mostly electricity, then the machine itself. The steps:
1. Find your share of the network: your hashrate divided by the network's. 2. Multiply by the coins issued per day to get your expected coins. 3. Multiply by the price to get revenue, and subtract the pool fee. 4. Subtract electricity: power in kilowatts x 24 hours x your price per kWh. 5. Compare the daily profit with the machine's price to get a break-even time.
2. Try it with live data
3. The formula
daily coins = (your hashrate / network hashrate) x coins issued per day x (1 - pool fee)
daily profit = daily coins x price - (watts / 1000) x 24 x price per kWh
4. A worked example
Suppose a Scrypt ASIC rated at 17 GH/s and about 3,570 W, the listed specification of the Antminer L9 [1], mines Litecoin on a network of 2.5 PH/s. Its share is 17 / 2,500,000, or 0.00068%. Multiply that by the roughly 3,600 LTC issued per day and the pool fee adjustment for a first estimate of daily coins; multiply by the price for revenue; subtract about 85.7 kWh of electricity a day at your rate. The live widgets above do this arithmetic with the current network numbers.
5. Go deeper: where estimates go wrong
- Difficulty rises as more miners join, lowering your share over time.
- Price moves can double or halve revenue without any change in your coins.
- Luck and stale shares mean real payouts vary from the expectation, especially over short periods.
- Merged mining can add a second coin's revenue for the same electricity; see merged mining explained.
- Listed specifications are ratings, not guarantees of what a unit delivers at the wall [1].
The hashrate and issuance inputs come from full nodes [2], and the reward schedules are explained in block rewards and halvings.
6. In Scrypt Wallet
When your mining pays out, Scrypt Wallet receives it to a non-custodial address. The dedicated Litecoin mining calculator and Dogecoin mining calculator add live data refresh and pool-fee fields for each coin.
References
- ASIC Miner Value (2024). Bitmain Antminer L9. Listed specifications (hashrate, power) of the Antminer L9 Scrypt ASIC. https://www.asicminervalue.com/miners/bitmain/antminer-l9
- Bitcoin Project (2020). Mining, Bitcoin Developer Guide. Explains how miners assemble blocks, the target and pooled mining. https://developer.bitcoin.org/devguide/mining.html
Common questions
How do I calculate mining profit?
Multiply your share of the network by the coins issued per day and the price, subtract the pool fee, then subtract electricity cost. Hardware cost and price changes come on top.
Are the estimates guaranteed?
No. Difficulty, price, luck, uptime and pool terms all change, so treat any estimate as a scenario, not a promise.
General education, not financial, tax or legal advice. Figures are schematic. Protocol parameters are cited to primary sources and can change; verify against the linked source before relying on them.