According to reports from Crypto.news, up to 20% of Bitcoin miners may be unprofitable under current market conditions, with older machines and miners with high power costs facing the most pressure. The mining industry experienced its hardest quarter since the April 2024 halving during Q4 2025, as reported by CoinShares. The listed miners' average cash cost to produce one Bitcoin reached approximately $79,995, while hashprice fell near five-year lows. Bitcoin miners secure the network by validating blocks through computing power and earn both block rewards and transaction fees for their work.
As reported by Crypto.news, Bitcoin's block rewards fall by half during each halving, creating a recurring challenge for network security. The problem centers on whether transaction fees will be sufficient to cover the cost of keeping miners online as block rewards continue to shrink. According to Avalanche founder Emin Gün Sirer, Bitcoin's reward model could become a larger concern than quantum computing or rival tokens, as the debate focuses on whether miners will earn enough to secure the network when block rewards keep declining. Sirer has predicted that Bitcoin could face a looming crisis due to what he considers a flawed economic design that will suffer in the long term due to insufficient mining rewards.
According to reports from Crypto.news, Sirer suggested Bitcoin could use a pre-consensus layer to reduce the load on the base network, which could help Bitcoin process activity more efficiently. However, this design may face resistance from Bitcoin users who prefer limited changes to the base protocol. Bitcoin's community has historically moved slowly on large technical changes, especially those seen as changing its security model. Sirer's warning that shrinking rewards pose a bigger risk than quantum computing remains a debated claim, depending on future Bitcoin fees, miner costs, hardware gains, and market price.
