A Winklevoss-backed Zcash mining bet is on track to hit $125 million a year

The figure is revenue, not profit. It assumes the fleet runs continuously and comes before electricity, hosting, mining-pool fees and hardware costs. A lower ZEC price or another increase in network computing power would reduce it.

Kevin Zhang, Cypherpunk’s head of mining, put the current economics at about $1,000 in gross revenue for every megawatt-hour of electricity consumed.

Each Z15 Pro produces about 840 KSol/s while drawing 2.78 kilowatts, according to figures Zhang posted on X. At the price used in his calculation, one machine earned about $68 a day, equal to roughly $1,019 per megawatt-hour.

Zhang estimated that the most profitable new bitcoin mining machines produce between $156 and $180 per megawatt-hour, while the widely deployed Antminer S21 XP produces between $126 and $142.

Zcash mining also currently produces more gross revenue per unit of power than a large artificial-intelligence hosting agreement.

An example is CleanSpark, whose 20-year lease for 175 megawatts of data-center capacity is expected to generate $6.6 billion, equal to about $215 per megawatt-hour before annual price increases.

The figures carry different costs and risks, however. Zcash’s roughly $1,000 is the value of coins mined before power, equipment and hosting costs, and changes with ZEC’s price and network competition.