Why ASIC miner prices fell in 2026 — and how to time a purchase

An Antminer S19j Pro — a machine that cost thousands at launch — now trades at roughly $1.02 per terahash. At 104 TH, that is about $106 for the whole unit. Not a typo, and not a scam listing: it is the published index price for that efficiency band.

Second-hand ASIC prices fell somewhere between 68% and 72% across every efficiency tier in the twelve months to August 2026. This article explains what happened, whether it is over, and — the part most price articles skip — why the cheapest machine is now often the faster route to payback, but only if your power is cheap enough.

All figures are dated. Mining numbers rot quickly, so check the live profitability ranking before acting on anything here.

What actually happened to ASIC prices

Luxor's Hashrate Index publishes an ASIC Price Index in dollars per terahash, split by efficiency band. Those are the numbers to watch, because a headline unit price tells you nothing without the hashrate behind it.

As of 9 August 2026:

Over two years the decline is starker still. The 19–25 J/TH band peaked at $13.65/TH in December 2024 and now sits at $2.11 — down 85%. The 25–38 band peaked at $10.54 in January 2025 and is down 90%.

One honest caveat on the flagship band. The "Under 14 J/TH" series only begins on 16 March 2026, when it was introduced at $21.15/TH. Part of the 14–19 band's apparent fall from $15.00 in February to $5.40 in April is flagship models being reclassified out of it into the new band, not a pure price collapse. Anyone quoting that February-to-April move as a clean 64% crash is misreading the data.

The bottom was in the first half of 2026

This is the part that changes the decision. Each band bottomed and has since recovered:

• 25–38 J/TH bottomed at $0.88 on 2 March 2026 — now $1.02, up 16%
• 19–25 J/TH bottomed at $1.15 on 20 April 2026 — now $2.11, up 83%
• 14–19 J/TH bottomed at $2.30 on 15 June 2026 — now $4.95, up 115%

If you were waiting for the absolute floor, it passed. Prices are still historically low, but the "it keeps getting cheaper every month" trade ended in spring.

Why prices fell — and it wasn't difficulty

The usual explanation is "difficulty went up, so old miners became worthless." That is not what happened in 2026. Difficulty contracted.

• Bitcoin price peaked around $126,000 in October 2025 and sat at $64,259 on 17 August 2026 — down 26.4% year to date. This is the primary driver.
• Difficulty fell from a peak of 155.97T in late October 2025 to 127.48T on 8 August 2026 — roughly −18%, after six consecutive months of net contraction.
• Network hashrate was 920 EH/s on 17 August 2026, down from 1,011 EH/s in early June.
• AI and HPC conversions are the supply shock. Large public miners swapping ASIC capacity for GPU capacity pushed significant second-hand fleet supply into the market. This best explains why every band fell about 70% simultaneously — new-generation releases alone would have depressed old gear while supporting new.

Hashprice — daily revenue per petahash — tells the same story. It was $31.89/PH/day on 17 August 2026, having touched $28.94 on 8 June. The forward curve prices the next six months at an average of $30.67/PH/day: the market expects mild further softening, not recovery.

On tariffs: US duties on Chinese-built miners (57.6% China-origin, 21.6% for Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand) date from August 2025. We could not verify the current 2026 rates or quantify a US-versus-EU price split, so we are not going to assert one.

The counterintuitive part: cheap and old often pays back faster

Efficiency is not the same as return. Consider two machines at index prices, both hosted:

At current index prices the older, less efficient machine pays back three to four times faster — because it costs 3.7× less per terahash while producing only about 1.35× less revenue per unit of power.

The efficiency premium only wins above roughly $0.07/kWh. That is the pivot for UK and EU buyers: at domestic tariffs, efficiency is everything and almost nothing is profitable. At hosted industrial rates, the cheap machine wins on payback.

Break-even electricity by machine

The formula is one line: break-even $/kWh = hashprice ÷ (J/TH × 24). At $31.89/PH/day:

Nothing on that list survives a domestic tariff. That is not pessimism, it is arithmetic — and it is the entire reason hosted mining exists. Run your own numbers on the mining calculator.

What is worth buying used, and what is e-waste

For older hardware, the index effectively is the used market.

• Best risk-adjusted entry: the 14–19 J/TH band at $4.95/TH. S21-class machines, modern enough to survive a hashprice dip, cheap enough to pay back inside a year on cheap power.
• Marginal: 19–25 J/TH at $2.11/TH. Fine at sub-$0.05/kWh, fragile otherwise.
• E-waste line: anything above roughly 29 J/TH needs sub-$0.045/kWh — below almost every rate available in the UK or EU, hosted or not.

One data quirk worth flagging: the 38–68 J/TH band prints $2.71/TH, above the 25–38 band's $1.02. That is thin, illiquid data rather than a real signal — ignore it. Vendor-quoted used figures also conflict wildly with the index and with each other, so we would trust the index over an individual listing.

If you are buying used, read the ASIC lifespan guide first — the inspection checklist there matters more than the price.

The case against buying now

It would be dishonest to present only the bull case.

• Cheap ASICs are cheap because forward revenue expectations fell. The forward curve says $30.67/PH/day for the next six months — about 4% below spot.
• Every payback figure above is computed at spot hashprice and will stretch if that curve is right.
• The 18% difficulty contraction is simultaneously the bull case (fewer competitors per unit of hashrate) and the bear case (it happened because operators are capitulating).
• If the AI/HPC fleet liquidation continues, second-hand supply keeps arriving regardless of price.
• Luxor's own commentary notes that at around $32/PH/day, hashprice is at or below break-even for many miners. The company selling the index is telling you the market is marginal.

The honest framing: a 6-month payback on a $990 machine survives a further 30% hashprice fall. A 27-month payback on a $4,936 machine does not. At current spreads, cheap-and-older is the resilient trade rather than the risky one — but only with power under about $0.05/kWh, and only if you accept the machine has a shorter economic life.

How to actually time a purchase

1. Lock your power price first. The rate determines which machines are even eligible. Everything else is secondary.
2. Shop in $/TH, not in dollars. A $900 miner is not cheap if it is 34 J/TH.
3. Check your break-even against the table above with a margin — if your rate is within 20% of break-even, the machine is a bet on hashprice, not an investment.
4. Don't wait for a lower floor. All three bands bottomed in H1 2026 and have recovered 16–115%.
5. Match the machine to the holding period. Buying older gear to pay back in eight months is defensible. Buying it to hold four years is not.

Read next: hosted miner uptime and SLAs, what hosting contracts actually say, or the ASIC lifespan guide. Price data from Luxor's Hashrate Index ASIC Price Index (9 August 2026) and hashprice roundups (17 August 2026). Figures move daily — verify before purchasing. Nothing here is investment advice; mining profitability is never guaranteed.