JPMorgan Says Bitcoin Crossing $85,000 Production Cost Could Slow Miner Selling
Bitcoin's return above the average cost to mine one coin may reduce the miner selling pressure that has weighed on the market for most of 2026, JPMorgan analysts said in a client note published September 24.
The note, led by Managing Director Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou, identifies $85,000 as the current average global production cost per Bitcoin. With the coin trading at $86,979 on September 21 and $86,214 on September 23, the bank argued that a sustained hold above that level would give miners less reason to sell coins immediately after earning them. The caveat is significant: if the price slides back below $85,000, JPMorgan cautioned that further miner capitulation remains possible without a price recovery.
A year of sustained stress
The $85,000 figure is not fixed. JPMorgan's own estimate has shifted considerably throughout 2026. The bank opened the year with a production cost of around $90,000 per coin. By June, that number had fallen to $77,000 to $78,000, reflecting a shakeout among high-cost operators who powered down their machines when prolonged losses became unsustainable. As those miners left the network, two things happened: competition for block rewards decreased, and the Bitcoin network's automatic difficulty adjustment lowered the computational work required to earn each reward. Both effects reduced the average cost to produce a Bitcoin.
The September revision back up to $85,000 likely reflects a partial recovery in network hashrate, rising network difficulty, and renewed capex depreciation pressures as surviving miners expanded operations.
As of early September 2026, global hashrate sat at roughly 972 exahashes per second (EH/s), still about 16% below the October 2025 peak of approximately 1,160 EH/s (a Verse Press calculation derived from CoinWarz and CoinShares data). The network's difficulty also recorded three consecutive negative adjustments during the stress period, the first such streak since July 2022, including a single drop of 10.09% in June 2026.
JPMorgan described the earlier stress period, during which Bitcoin sat below its production cost for five consecutive months through mid-2026, as "a bullish contrarian signal going forward" while also warning that further capitulation was possible without a price recovery. The bank noted plainly: "When bitcoin trades below its production cost, higher-cost miners power down, the hashrate declines, and difficulty adjusts lower."
Miners sold a record volume of coins in early 2026
The scale of miner selling pressure earlier this year helps explain why the threshold matters. Six major publicly listed mining companies sold a combined 32,000 BTC in the first quarter of 2026 alone, surpassing their total combined sales for all of 2025. Those six companies were Marathon Digital Holdings, CleanSpark, Riot Platforms, Cango, Core Scientific, and Bitdeer.
JPMorgan estimated that at peak stress, roughly 15 to 20 percent of the global mining fleet was operating at a loss.
One structural factor amplifies the sensitivity of miner revenue to Bitcoin's price: on-chain transaction fees now account for just 0.43% of total miner rewards, with the remaining 99.57% coming from the fixed block subsidy. Following the April 2024 halving, which cut that subsidy from 6.25 BTC to 3.125 BTC per block, there is almost no fee cushion to absorb price swings. According to Cryptolexicon's September 2026 analysis, a 20% price drop translates to roughly a 20% revenue drop for miners until the next difficulty adjustment.
Hashprice, the measure of daily mining revenue per unit of computing power, recovered to about $39.63 per petahash per second per day in early September, up 22% over the prior 30 days. That rebound is almost entirely price-driven. For context, hashprice had sunk to a record low of approximately $27.7 per petahash per second per day in June 2026, making the September recovery substantial even as the metric remains well below pre-halving levels.
What the threshold means for Africa and South Asia
The $85,000 figure carries particular weight in regions where electricity costs sit well below the global average. Industrial hosting rates in Nigeria are running around $0.036 per kilowatt-hour in 2026; in Ethiopia, the rate is approximately $0.053 per kilowatt-hour. Both figures are among the lowest publicly disclosed long-term hosting rates anywhere in the world. When Bitcoin trades above the global average production cost, miners operating in these lower-cost environments are more likely to remain in profitable territory, though no precise all-in production cost figures for Nigerian or Ethiopian operations have been publicly disclosed to confirm the exact margin.
Ethiopia's growing mining sector helped push the country into the global top ten for hashrate contribution, according to CoinShares' first-quarter 2026 mining report. Oman and Paraguay also joined the global top ten in the same period, reflecting a broader geographic diversification of mining activity away from traditional hubs.
For the retail side of African crypto markets, reduced miner selling pressure also matters indirectly. Nigeria has an estimated 27 to 30 million active crypto users, many of whom rely on Bitcoin and stablecoins for remittances and as a hedge against local currency weakness. Approximately 59% of crypto-active adults in Nigeria hold USDT, and stablecoin adoption across Sub-Saharan Africa grew by more than 180% year over year in 2026. A steadier Bitcoin price, supported by reduced miner selling pressure, improves the reliability of these everyday use cases. Kenya adds further dimension to this picture: Bitcoin functions primarily as a store of value there, according to BitcoinKE, underscoring how price stability ripples across a range of African crypto economies.
In South Asia, the stakes are similarly practical. India ranks first globally for crypto adoption, a position it has held for the third consecutive year, with approximately 119 million holders, per the 2026 Chainalysis Global Crypto Adoption Index. Pakistan ranks third, and Bangladesh represents another major crypto-for-remittance corridor in the region. All three countries have significant P2P and cross-border remittance activity tied to Bitcoin price conditions. Cryptolexicon's September 2026 analysis also found that older mining hardware became viable again at elevated hashprices in low-electricity-cost regions, a development particularly relevant to small-scale and informal miners operating across South Asia's low-cost electricity corridors.
Outlook
Bitcoin's all-time high of $126,198 was set on October 6, 2025. The current price range represents a discount of roughly 31% from that peak (a Verse Press calculation using a mid-range September price of approximately $86,500 against the October 2025 high), meaning markets remain well below peak-cycle sentiment even as miner fundamentals show improvement.
JPMorgan has separately published a long-term Bitcoin price target of $266,000, according to reporting by CoinCentral, though the September note focuses narrowly on short-term miner behavior rather than longer-term price forecasts.
Whether current price levels hold will determine whether September 2026 marks a genuine turning point for mining economics or another brief pause in a prolonged period of industry stress.