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Lifespan report · Oct 11, 2026 · 4 min read
Antminer S9 lifespan report: $2,100 in 2016, 5.57 BTC by the time it stopped
Bought at launch in June 2016 and run on 3.9¢ power until the day it stopped paying, eight years later. It paid for itself in seven months, was worth more secondhand than new, and mined 30% more bitcoin than the same dollars would have bought.
TL;DR
- It paid for itself in seven months. Bought for about $2,100 at launch in June 2016, it had made its price back in cash by 23 January 2017.
- 94% of its bitcoin came in the first two years. 5.57 BTC over eight years of life; 5.07 BTC of it by the end of 2017.
- Each bitcoin cost $870. The machine, every power bill and nothing back at the end, divided by what it mined.
- It beat buying. The same dollars, spent on bitcoin on the same days, would have bought 4.27 BTC: the S9 mined 30% more.
- Its life ended eight days after the 2024 halving, when the reward per block fell below what 98 J/TH can pay for at 3.9¢.
A $2,100 machine, a month before a halving
Bitmain shipped the first Antminer S9s on 12 June 2016: 14 TH/s from 16-nanometre chips, drawing about 1,375 watts, or 98 joules for every terahash. It went on sale at about $2,100, without a power supply. Bitcoin was $608 the day the first batch shipped, and the block reward was about to halve, from 25 BTC to 12.5, on 9 July.
This report follows one S9 bought at that price on that day, through its whole working life. It runs on 3.9¢ power every day, our cheapest site's rate today, at 95% uptime with a 2% pool fee, and it is switched off on any day the bitcoin it would mine would not cover its power. Its life ends on the last day its trailing month still made money, if it never came back after. The method is the same one behind our study of mining against buying, and the charts below compute it live.
Nothing here is measured on a real machine of ours. Our own S9's story is a different one: we bought it in 2018 and moved it once. This is the S9 itself, from its first day to its last.
The first two years made 94% of its bitcoin
A new machine on a small network earns an outsized share of every block. In the second half of 2016 the S9 mined 3.29 BTC, and in 2017 another 1.78 BTC. By the end of 2017, when its generation had become most of the network, it had mined 5.07 of the 5.57 BTC it would ever produce.
From there each year brought less: 0.27 BTC in 2018, 0.15 in 2019, 0.04 in 2020, 0.03 in 2021. The machine did not slow down. Everyone else got faster, and difficulty rose with them, so the same 14 TH/s won a smaller share of every block.
In its first year and a half it mined 5.07 BTC. It took the next six years to mine half a bitcoin more.
It paid for itself in seven months
Sold as mined, the S9's bitcoin covered its $2,100 price by 23 January 2017, seven months in. By the end of 2017 it had brought in $6,127 of profit after power, with its best month, December 2017, alone worth $803.
That is the part of the story most S9 owners remember. Power at 3.9¢ was a small cost against what it earned: $1.29 a day, against more than $10 a day of bitcoin through most of 2017.
Worth more secondhand than new
Depreciation is the cost most owners forget, and the S9 shows why it is hard to predict. In January 2018, at the top of that cycle, machines of its class were changing hands at about $254 per terahash: an S9 was worth roughly $3,550, more than it cost new.
Then the value fell as fast as it had risen. By late 2022 its class was down to about $5 per terahash, around $67 a machine, and soon after there was no market for it at all. Over its whole life the S9 lost its full $2,100, about $266 a year. Against the $9,718 it brought in after power, that is a cost it covered more than four times.
Eighteen months after launch, a used S9 sold for more than a new one had cost.
Three halvings, and the long fade
The S9 lived through three halvings. The first, a month after it shipped, barely mattered: the network was still small. The second, in May 2020, cut its revenue in half overnight, and for the rest of 2020 it ran only 205 of 366 days, switched off whenever the bitcoin it would mine did not cover its power.
The 2021 bull market brought it back to life. With bitcoin above $40,000, even a 98 J/TH machine made $1,008 after power that year. Then 2022 took it down again, and through 2023 it ran on just 16 days. It made its last profitable month in April 2024, on the high fees around the fourth halving, and stopped for good on 28 April. To pay its power at 3.9¢ it needed hashprice near $99 per petahash a day; by then a petahash earned about $52.
The full accounts
Over 7.9 years of life the S9 ran on 2,132 days and mined 5.57 BTC. Sold the day it was mined, that bitcoin brought in $12,461. Power took $2,743, 22% of it. Take away the $2,100 price and add nothing back at the end, and the S9 left its owner $7,618 in profit: 4.6 times its price in cash from mining, or each bitcoin for $870.
An owner who kept every bitcoin instead holds 5.57 BTC, worth $461,711 at bitcoin's price on 11 October 2026.
Was it worth buying?
The fair test is not whether it made money. It is whether the same dollars would have done better as bitcoin. Put the $2,100 into bitcoin in June 2016, and every power bill into bitcoin on the day it was paid, and you would hold 4.27 BTC. The S9 mined 5.57 BTC: 30% more, after paying for itself, its power and its depreciation.
Two things made it worth it. It was bought at launch, when it was the most efficient machine on the network and earned the biggest share of every block. And on cheap power it could run long enough to collect almost everything it was ever going to mine. Efficiency decides how many halvings a machine survives; the S9, at 98 J/TH, survived three only because 3.9¢ power gave it room.
Mining output depends on bitcoin's price, difficulty and uptime, and isn't guaranteed. These are past results, not a forecast.
The S9 mined 30% more bitcoin than the same dollars would have bought on the same days.
Which machines this covers
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.