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Field report · Sep 9, 2026 · 6 min read

The Whatsminer M60 had the worst timing of anything we bought

Landed six weeks after the halving at 19.9 J/TH, into the hardest market a new machine could walk into. It is still clearing its power — in Nigeria, not Argentina — and still on track to cover its box.

A Whatsminer M60 photographed beside a mining container

MicroBT Whatsminer M60 (170 TH/s)

Six weeks late

The M60 reached our floor in June 2024 — six weeks after the April halving had doubled the electricity cost of every coin on the network. At 19.9 J/TH it was a reasonable machine that arrived into the least forgiving conditions a new machine could arrive into.

Bought at $2,945 and landed at $4,231, it has mined and kept 0.0769 BTC across 883 days for $4,062 of electricity. That is $52,803 a coin — the most expensive coin of any machine of its generation in these write-ups, and the direct consequence of never having a pre-halving month to bank.

Cashflow of $1,888 against a $4,231 box: about 45% of the way through. With the forward figures it reaches roughly 1.3× its hardware by the 2028 halving. It just takes the full four years rather than two.

Same machine, six months earlier, and this is a completely different article.

Chart: Coins kept, the electricity that made them, and where it lands by the 2028 halving.

Moved to Nigeria, June 2026

It lasted 731 days in Argentina. On 7 June 2026 it moved to Nigeria, and it has been there for the 152 days since — the one relocation it will make, and the right call.

The relocation is doing real work here. At 6¢ its margin had run thin; at 3.9¢ it has 0.028 BTC and roughly $2,229 of net still to come before the halving. For a machine with this efficiency the site is not a detail — it is the whole difference, and the move is what turned it into a machine that covers itself.

Chart: The step where it changed sites is visible from across the room.

What we took from it

Two things. The first is that a halving is a step change in the cost of every coin, so a machine that lands just after one needs its full four years rather than two. That is a timing question, not a hardware one.

The second is more useful. The M60 is the weakest performer in this group and it still covers its hardware, because it was bought at a sensible price and sent to cheap power once that was clearly where it belonged. The machine did not decide that outcome. The site did — which is the variable you actually control.

What the same money buys now.

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.