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Lifespan report · Oct 11, 2026 · 3 min read
Antminer S17 lifespan report: six and a half years, 0.87 BTC, and 29% more than buying
Bought at launch in April 2019 for $2,159 and run on 3.9¢ power until it stopped paying in November 2025. It paid for itself in six and a half months, was worth two and a half times its price in 2021, and mined 29% more bitcoin than the same dollars would have bought.
Bitmain Antminer S17 (56 TH/s)
TL;DR
- It paid for itself in six and a half months, by 27 October 2019.
- It ran almost every day of its life: 2,321 of 2,410 days, through two halvings.
- Its best year was its third. 2021 made $5,048 after power, more than twice its price.
- It beat buying by 29%. 0.873 BTC mined against 0.676 BTC for the same dollars on the same days.
- Each bitcoin cost $8,748: machine, power and depreciation, divided by what it mined.
Launched into the 2019 recovery
Bitmain opened sales of the Antminer S17 on 9 April 2019, and the 56 TH/s model sold out at $2,159. At 45 joules per terahash it did the work of an S9 on less than half the power. Bitcoin was $5,269 that day, climbing out of the 2018 bear market.
This report follows one S17 bought at that price, from launch to the last day it paid, on 3.9¢ power (our cheapest site's rate today), 95% uptime and a 2% pool fee, switched off on any day it would lose money. Its life ends on the last day its trailing month still paid for its power. It is the method behind our study of mining against buying, and the charts compute it live. Our own S17's story, bought later and moved once, is told separately.
Most of its bitcoin came early, most of its dollars came in 2021
In the rest of 2019 the S17 mined 0.376 BTC, 43% of everything it would mine. By April 2021, two years in, it had 71%. Each halving and every new generation of machines cut its share, so 2022 brought 0.081 BTC and 2023 0.051.
The dollars ran the other way. 2021 was its best year by far: 0.128 BTC, sold for $5,909, $5,048 after power. Its best single month, August 2021, made $530.
Paid for in six and a half months
Sold as mined, its bitcoin covered the $2,159 price by 27 October 2019. At 3.9¢ the S17 cost $2.36 a day to run and earned more than $11 a day in its first months.
Worth two and a half times its price in 2021
In March 2021 machines of its class were selling for about $95 per terahash: an S17 was worth about $5,295 secondhand, two and a half times its launch price. An owner who sold then would have had the machine, two years of bitcoin and a profit on the hardware itself.
Kept to the end, the S17 lost all of it. By December 2023 its class sold for about $3 per terahash, around $190 a machine, and soon after there was no market for it. Over its life it lost its whole $2,159, about $330 a year.
Two years after launch, a used S17 sold for $5,300. It had cost $2,159 new.
Two halvings, and running almost to the end
At 45 J/TH and 3.9¢, the S17 had room to spare. It ran every single day from launch to the end of 2023, through the 2020 halving and the 2022 bear market. The April 2024 halving finally pinched: it ran 308 days that year and 285 of 316 in 2025, switched off only on the worst days. It stopped for good on 12 November 2025, when hashprice, at about $42 per petahash a day, fell below the roughly $45 it needed at 3.9¢.
The full accounts
Over 6.6 years of life the S17 ran on 2,321 of 2,410 days and mined 0.873 BTC. Sold as mined, that brought in $16,870. Power took $5,475, 32% of it. Take away the $2,159 price, with nothing back at the end, and it left $9,236 in profit: 5.3 times its price in cash from mining. Each bitcoin cost $8,748.
Kept instead, its 0.873 BTC were worth $72,355 at bitcoin's price on 11 October 2026.
Was it worth buying?
Against buying bitcoin with the same dollars on the same days, $2,159 in April 2019 and every power bill after, the S17 wins clearly: 0.873 BTC mined against 0.676 BTC bought, 29% more, after paying for itself, its power and its depreciation.
It was the efficient machine of its moment, bought at launch on the way up from a bear market, and on cheap power its efficiency bought it two more years of life after the 2024 halving. The Antminer S15, launched four months earlier at 57 J/TH and bought at the very bottom, lost to buying; the S17 did not.
Mining output depends on bitcoin's price, difficulty and uptime, and isn't guaranteed. These are past results, not a forecast.
0.873 BTC mined, against 0.676 BTC for the same dollars. The S17 won by 29%.
Which machines this covers
The other side of this machine
The Antminer S17 mined the whole bull run in Argentina, then crossed the Atlantic once — Three and a half years on a high-uptime site, straight through the best market the network has ever had, and then one crossing to cheap power when a full year of figures said it belonged there. It mined until November 2025, and the coins are all still here.
Disclosure
Firsthand Bitcoin sells and hosts mining hardware, including this machine. No manufacturer, distributor or affiliate programme paid for or reviewed this page and we take no commission on the links above. Historical figures are computed from daily bitcoin price and network hashprice, each day valued at its own prices. Nothing here is investment advice.