Zcash miners are pulling in roughly $727 per megawatt-hour of electricity consumed, a figure that makes Bitcoin mining look like a hobby by comparison. Bitcoin’s Antminer S23 Pro generates approximately $162 per MWh, meaning Zcash is delivering more than four times the revenue on the same unit of power.
The numbers, based on analysis from TheEnergyMag, also dwarf the high-performance computing colocation benchmark of around $222 per MWh. That’s the rate data centers typically earn from renting out rack space to AI and cloud workloads, the business that Bitcoin miners have been pivoting toward as a hedge.
What’s driving the gap
The short answer is price. ZEC has been trading in the $800 to $890 range, a dramatic rebound for a coin that spent years languishing well below its 2018 highs. One week in 2026 alone saw a 68.7% jump, the kind of move that transforms mining spreadsheets overnight.
The hardware doing the heavy lifting is Bitmain’s Z15 Pro ASIC, purpose-built for the Equihash algorithm that secures Zcash’s proof-of-work network.
