JPMorgan analysts led by Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou have put a figure on what many traders treat as instinct: the average cost of producing one bitcoin now sits at roughly $85,000. The bank frames the level as a soft floor tied directly to mining economics, a threshold that has taken on fresh significance after bitcoin spent 280 days trading below it before briefly crossing above $87,000 last week.
The bank's analysts note that the last comparable stretch below production cost came in 2018, when bitcoin stayed under the threshold for 224 days. The current run has outlasted that episode, underscoring how prolonged the pressure on miners has been before last week's bounce.
That rally proved short-lived. Since the report's publication, bitcoin has traded back down to $84,100, and stood at $83,900 on September 30, putting the price just below the cost estimate JPMorgan assigns to mining.
Miners under pressure
The production-cost estimate arrives alongside a broader retreat in mining activity. Bitcoin's hashrate has fallen roughly 19% since its October peak, while mining difficulty is down about 15%. The network has gone almost eleven months without setting a new hashrate record, a stretch long enough to draw attention from analysts tracking the sector.
Economist Saifedean Ammous has floated the possibility that this contraction could prove structural rather than cyclical, though that remains his own hypothesis rather than an established conclusion. Separately, Cambridge estimates put the network's electricity consumption at roughly 190 terawatt-hours in December 2025, with a projected decline to around 130 terawatt-hours by mid-2026.
What a floor means for miners
For JPMorgan, the significance of the $85,000 level lies less in its precision than in what it implies for miner behaviour. If bitcoin's price holds near or above the estimated production cost, miners facing thinner margins have less incentive to sell coins simply to cover operating expenses.
The bank's analysts put it plainly: "En la medida en que se mantenga, este nuevo contexto debería dar un respiro a los mineros de Bitcoin, reduciendo el riesgo de ventas forzadas por su parte."
For European investors watching bitcoin's price action, the production-cost framework offers a different lens than pure technical analysis: a level grounded in the economics of the network's infrastructure rather than chart patterns alone. Whether $85,000 holds as support will depend on how miners respond to margins that remain, by JPMorgan's own estimate, razor thin.
