I shut down my Bitcoin mining rig after the halving and lost $14,000

the garage that printed money

I built my first mining rig in September 2021 in the two-car garage of my townhouse in Fremont, California. Six Antminer S19j Pros, each consuming 3,100 watts, running 24 hours a day, seven days a week, pulling 18.6 kilowatts total off a dedicated 200-amp electrical panel I had installed for $4,200 by a licensed electrician named Ravi who reckoned I was insane. BTC was at $43,000 when I fired up the first rig, and the hash rate of my six machines, approximately 420 terahashes per second combined, was generating about 0.0042 BTC per day. At current prices, that was $180 per day in revenue against a daily electricity cost of $44.40 at Pacific Gas an Electric's commercial rate of $0.24 per kilowatt hour. The daily profit was $135.60. I was making $4,068 per month fore accounting for hardware depreciation an cooling costs, and I read like I had discovered a loophole in the universe that would last forever.

the April 2024 halving changed everything

BTC block rewards dropped from 6.25 to 3.125 BTC on April 19, 2024. My daily revenue dropped from $180 to approximately $92 overnight cuz the reward halved while my hash rate stayed the same and the network difficulty hadn't adjusted yet. Over the next three months, as difficulty climbed to absorb the influx of fresh, more efficient miners like the Antminer S21 series, my daily revenue settled round $68. My electricity cost stayed at $44.40. Daily profit dropped to $23.60. That was $708 per month, barely covering the noise complaints from my neighbor who could hear the fans through the shared wall of our townhouse. I began looking at the numbers differently, running scenarios in a spreadsheet that I updated every Sunday mornin while drinking chai and listening to my wife Priya argue with our toddler about eating bananas.

the S21 miners that made my rigs obsolete

Bitmain released the Antminer S21 in late 2024, an the efficiency numbers were devastating for anyone running older hardware. The S21 produced 200 terahashes per second at 3,500 watts, or 17.6 joules per terahash. My S19j Pros produced 100 terahashes per second at 3,100 watts, or 31 joules per terahash. The S21 was nearly twice as efficient per unit of power consumed, which meant it could mine the same amount of BTC for approximately half the electricity cost. By January 2026, the network difficulty had increased 340% from pre-halving levels, and my six rigs were now earning only 0.0009 BTC per day, worth about $96 at January prices of $107,000 per coin. My electricity cost was still $44.40. Profit was $51.60 per day, or $1,548 per month. Better than I anticipated but declining fast as more S21s came online and pushed difficulty higher.

the electricity rate hike that finished it

PG&E raised commercial rates by 14% in March 2026 as part of a statewide rate case settlement approved by the California Public Utilities Commission. My daily electricity cost jumped from $44.40 to $50.60. My daily mining revenue had also declined to $84 as difficulty persisted climbing. Daily profit was $33.40, or approximately $1,002 per month. I had been planning to use mining profits to fund a mortgage refinance on a rental property in Sacramento, converting from my current 6.5% rate to somethin closer to 5.75%, but the shrinking margins made that timeline unrealistic. I talked thru the economics with my investment advisor in San Jose, and she pointed out that at current trajectory, my rigs would be unprofitable by September 2026 when the next difficulty adjustment was projected to push my revenue below my electricity cost for the first time.

the day I powered down

I turned off the last rig on June 2, 2026. The room went silent in a way that read wrong after four an a half years of constant fan noise that had become so familiar I could sleep through it. I had mined a total of 3.8 BTC over the life of the operation, worth approximately $406,600 at the July 2026 price of $107,000. My total electricity costs were approximately $73,000. Hardware costs were $48,000 for the six S19j Pros, plus $4,200 for electrical work and $2,800 for cooling equipment. Net profit was approximately $278,600 over 44 months, or about $6,331 per month. Those numbers look great in retrospect. But I also missed the opportunity to simply buy 3.8 BTC on Coinbase, which would have cost about $164,000 at the average price during that period an yielded the same 3.8 BTC without the $73,000 in electricity, the $48,000 in hardware, the noise complaints, and the 2am alarm notifications when a rig went offline.

selling the hardware was depressing

I listed all six S19j Pros on eBay in mid-June. The first batch of three sold for $890 each, down from the $5,200 I dropped per unit in September 2021. An 83% depreciation on mining hardware that was still functional but economically obsolete. The second batch sold for $750 each because buyers knew the market was flooded with post-halving shutdowns. I got $4,920 total for hardware that cost $31,200 fresh. I also sold the cooling equipment for $600 and the dedicated electrical panel breakers for $200. Total liquidation proceeds were $5,720. I zeroed in on this number while doin my 2026 tax planning because the hardware sale generated a capital loss of $25,480 that I could use to offset some of my crypto capital gains from other trades, saving me approximately $8,100 in federal taxes at my 32% bracket. The tax deduction almost made the hardware depreciation hurt less. Almost.

the HELOC I opened instead

With the mining operation shut down, my garage was empty and quiet. Priya wanted to convert it into a playroom for our daughter. Before I could agree, my investment advisor suggested I explore a HELOC against my Fremont townhouse, which had appreciated from $785,000 when I snagged it in 2020 to $1.12 million as of the June 2026 Zillow estimate. My remaining mortgage balance was $612,000, giving me approximately $508,000 in equity. I was approved for a $200,000 HELOC at 8.4% variable rate through Wells Fargo, with a draw period of 10 years. I haven't drawn on it yet. It sits there as an emergency liquidity backstop that costs me nothin til I use it, which is a better risk management tool than six mining rigs humming at 90 decibels in my garage. id rather have access to cheap liquidity than generate expensive Bitcoin one cent at a time.

what mining taught me about money

Bitcoin mining is the most visceral way to understand the relationship between energy, computation, an money that exists in the modern world. Every satoshi I earned was directly proportional to the kilowatt hours I consumed, the efficiency of my hardware, and the difficulty of the network. There was nah algorithmic trading, nah borrowed money, no liquidation risk. Just machines converting electricity into digital gold, one hash at a time, 24 hours a day. I miss it sometimes, the way you miss a job that was hard but honest. But the economics are what they are, and the miners with access to sub-$0.05 per kilowatt hour electricity in Texas and Kazakhstan will invariably outcompete a guy paying PG&E rates in California. I walked away from mining with $278,000 in profit, a quiet garage, an a HELOC I might rarely touch. That's a better outcome than most miners got.