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Progress report · Nov 13, 2026 · 4 min read

Never off in a year: the Antminer S23 Hyd 3U mined through 2026's three hashrate crashes

A 1,160 TH/s rack unit at 9.5 J/TH, racked at our UAE site a year ago this week. Hashprice fell from $40.20 to $27.74 a petahash in that year, a seventh of the network switched off three times, and this machine's power line never came within $10 of any of it. Here is what it has banked, and what the forward figures say.

An Antminer S23 Hyd 3U rack unit in front of a softened row of dry coolers on a concrete pad under a desert sky

Bitmain Antminer S23 Hyd 3U (1,160 TH/s)

Twelve months in

The S23 Hyd 3U is two S23 Hyds in one 3U chassis: 1,160 TH/s from 11,020 W, 9.5 J/TH, hydro-cooled, 42 kg, built for a rack with a coolant loop at the cabinet. We bought ours on 14 November 2025 at $31,973, landed it at $35,271, and racked it at our UAE site at 6 cents, the site we build around hydro: dedicated plant, better than 99% uptime, and a manufacturer warranty centre nearby. It has been there for 365 days.

In those 365 days it has mined and kept 0.1945 BTC, worth about $14,376 at today's price, for $6,149 of electricity: about $31,600 a bitcoin, averaged over the year. Valued at today's price less every dollar of power, that is $8,228 of cashflow against the $35,271 it cost to land, 23% of the box in year one of a four-year life. At today's difficulty it makes a bitcoin for about $34,300 at 6 cents and returns roughly 18% in a first year at today's price of $69,262.

It was a hard year to be a marginal machine. Hashprice was $40.20 per petahash per day the week we racked it, fell to $27.74 on 6 June, and the network lost a seventh of itself inside two weeks three times, in January, June and this month, as today's data piece sets out. None of it reached this machine. At 9.5 J/TH a petahash of it uses 228 kWh a day, $13.68 at 6 cents, so even June's low paid it twice its power bill, and it has not had a day off.

At 9.5 J/TH a petahash costs $13.68 a day to run at 6 cents. The worst day of the year paid it $27.74.

Chart: Banked so far at the UAE site, and where the forward figures put it by the April 2028 halving.

Why the halving is a margin for it and a switch for others

The machines that switched off this year were the 20-plus J/TH units on 6-cent and dearer power, whose line sits at $29 to $31 a petahash, right where hashprice has been trading. The S23 Hyd 3U's line is $13.68 at 6 cents and $8.89 at Nigeria's 3.9 cents. After the April 2028 halving, at an unchanged price and difficulty, a petahash earns half what it does today, which is still above both of those lines. Efficiency decides how many halvings a machine survives, and this one is built to survive several.

That is also why it has not moved and is not about to. A machine crosses to cheap power once, when a full year of its own figures says the cheaper site is decisively better. For a 9.5 J/TH unit at 6 cents with a 99% site behind it, that year has not come close: at today's rates the UAE's uptime is worth more to it than Nigeria's price, and the engine that runs every figure on this page keeps it where it is.

Chart: Month by month at the UAE site, from the week it was racked. The dips are the hashprice troughs of January and June; the line never approaches zero.

What is left in it

At today's difficulty, and with bitcoin back at its previous high, it has another 0.258 BTC in it between now and the halving, worth roughly $32,100, which would put it at about 1.1× its landed cost by April 2028, with the machine still running after it. That is today's conditions held flat, never a forecast, and the difficulty cut landing today moves the bitcoin side of it up by about 9% from tonight.

Chart: Every bitcoin it has mined and kept since the week it was racked, and what they are worth held rather than sold.

What one costs today, and what the year did not show

The entry price is the part that has changed. We bought at launch; the reference price we hold for the 3U today is $26.25 a terahash, $30,450 a unit, and the single-unit S23 Hyd, the same 9.5 J/TH in a smaller box, is $23.52 a terahash. One rung up, the 8.9 J/TH S23 XP Hyd is in stock at $26.36 a terahash and makes a bitcoin for about $32,700 at the same site, against this machine's $34,300; the 10 J/TH S23e Hyd 2U is $11.13 a terahash. The 3U itself is sold out, so its figure is a reference rather than an offer.

Our outlook on this machine, written in October from the spec sheet and the June 2025 thread where it first appeared as "1160TH/s @ 9.5J/TH", said the halving would be a margin for it rather than a switch. A year of running says the same. What the year has not produced is a failure record: ours has had none, and one machine is not a record. The chassis has three earlier generations behind it; the S23 silicon has one year.

    The machines in stock that make cheaper bitcoin than this one does. At 9.5 J/TH the list is short.

    Sources and further reading

    Which machines this covers

    The other side of this machine

    The Antminer S23 Hyd 3U puts 1,160 TH/s in the same 11 kW box that once held 512 — Bitmain has now put four hydro-cooled Antminers into one 3U chassis, and the power draw has barely moved while the hashrate has more than doubled. The S23 Hyd 3U is the fourth, at 9.5 J/TH. Here is what it asks of a site, and what has to hold.

    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.