Revenue per MWh: Bitcoin ASIC vs Zcash ASIC vs H100 GPU

A megawatt should run whatever clears its power bill with room to spare, and a one-day revenue-per-MWh comparison cannot tell you which machine that is. What it can do is put very different machines on one scale. On Oct 13, 2026, "The Compute Competition", published on Hashrate Index by a Luxor researcher, did that for Zcash ASICs, Bitcoin ASICs and Nvidia H100 GPUs. The headline numbers are gross revenue for one day, which is not profit.

Revenue per MWh compares machines on the one input they share

Revenue per MWh is what a machine earns from one megawatt-hour of electricity, before any cost is subtracted. A Zcash ASIC produces solutions, a bitcoin miner produces terahashes and an H100 rents out GPU-hours, so their outputs do not compare directly. All three draw power. Divide a day's revenue by the day's energy use and you get dollars per MWh, a figure that works across all of them.

Disclosure: the article closes by inviting readers to contact Luxor about its mining hardware services and LuxOS firmware, and Fathom sells and hosts bitcoin miners, so both sides of this comparison have an interest.

Revenue per MWh on Oct 13, 2026: Zcash ASIC, Bitcoin ASIC and H100

At $0.08/kWh, the article reports about $773 per MWh for a stock Antminer Z15 Pro, about $135 for Bitcoin ASIC fleets under 14 J/TH, and about $1,679 for an H100 at 100% utilization.

The stated inputs were: power at $0.08/kWh, ZEC at $1,185, a Zcash network of 27.8 GSol/s (per the article, which we have not checked independently), bitcoin hashprice at $39.71 per PH/s per day, and the H100 rented at $2.92 per GPU-hour. The article's bitcoin hashprice and H100 rate come from Luxor-side data.

We reproduced two of the three from those inputs:

Z15 Pro: 840 kSol/s at 2,780 W
  revenue   $51.54/day (from the article's inputs)
  energy    2.78 kW x 24 h = 66.7 kWh
  result    $51.54 / 0.0667 MWh = about $772/MWh

H100: $2.92 per GPU-hour, 1.74 kW facility power per GPU
  revenue   $2.92 x 24 = $70.08/day
  energy    1.74 kW x 24 h = 41.76 kWh
  result    $70.08 / 0.04176 MWh = about $1,678/MWh

The bitcoin figure did not reproduce at exactly 14 J/TH. One megawatt at 14 J/TH supports 71.43 PH/s. At $39.71 per PH/s per day, that is about $2,836 a day per megawatt, or about $118 per MWh. The article's $135 would fit a fleet averaging roughly 12.3 J/TH, and it does not say which fleet it used. So: the article reports about $135 for fleets under 14 J/TH, and a machine at exactly 14 J/TH works out to about $118 by our arithmetic.

Each number rests on something that moves

For the Z15 Pro, the figure scales almost linearly with the ZEC price. The article's own scenario has ZEC halving to about $590, which cuts revenue to about $390 per MWh. ZEC traded at $1,184.90 on Oct 13, down about 8% in 24 hours and about 14% over the week. It was about $475 on Jul 30 and had a closing peak around $1,650 in late September.

Price is only part of it. TheEnergyMag measured the Z15 Pro at $727 per MWh on Aug 24 and $708 on Sep 4, gross and at the same 2,780 W, with ZEC around $890 to $1,023. The Sep 4 piece says rising network hashrate more than offset the higher ZEC price: as more miners arrive, each machine's share shrinks. Fortitude says it expects Bitmain's next-generation Zcash machines to begin shipping in Q2 2027 under an "indicative and non-binding" letter of intent for up to $100M (Fortitude's release, The Block).

For the H100, utilization and the rental rate matter most. Per the article, at 70% utilization it earns about $1,175 per MWh and at 50% about $839, and it crosses the stock Z15 Pro at roughly 46% to 48% utilization. The $2.92 is an "OCPI-H100 settlement" the article does not explain. Other Oct 12 benchmarks were about $2.85 (Silicon Data SDH100RT) and a median of about $3.57 on demand across 41 providers. The 1.74 kW per GPU is 1.338 kW times a PUE of 1.3, so it includes server, networking and cooling on top of the GPU itself (NVIDIA lists the H100 SXM at up to 700 W).

For bitcoin, the input is one day of hashprice from Luxor data.

None of this is profit. The article's "gross profit" is revenue minus power, and nothing else: no hosting fees, no pool fees, no overhead. The H100 figure also leaves out capex, financing, networking, staffing and demand risk. Revenue per MWh also ignores what the machine cost to buy.

What revenue per MWh means for a bitcoin miner or host

We take no side on which asset a megawatt should run. Three points hold up either way.

1. Power is the shared constraint. Every machine in the comparison is limited by how much electricity it can get and what it costs.
2. A one-day snapshot of a volatile coin is not a plan. ZEC moved 8% in a day and 14% in a week. A figure built on one day's price says what happened that day.
3. Revenue per MWh has to clear your power cost before anything else matters. You can compute that for your own rate.

Here is the method with our rates. Power costs your rate times 1,000 per MWh:

$0.07/kWh x 1,000 = $70 per MWh
$0.08/kWh x 1,000 = $80 per MWh

Gross, 14 J/TH at the article's hashprice: about $118 per MWh
$118 - $70 = $48    $118 - $80 = $38

That is before pool fees, before machine cost, before anything else. This is a worked example, not a forecast or a promise: the $118 to $135 range comes from one day of Luxor's hashprice, and hashprice moves.

At Fathom, miners bought from us are hosted in Southeast Texas (Entergy Texas, not ERCOT) at $0.07/kWh all-in with no minimum. Bring-your-own hosting is $0.08/kWh with a 10-unit minimum. We charge no performance fees and take no share of mined output. Our hosting costs page lays out what the rate covers, and the profitability calculator runs the same arithmetic on your own rate and machine.

FAQ

What is revenue per MWh?

Revenue per MWh is the gross revenue a machine earns from one megawatt-hour of electricity. You get it by dividing a day's revenue by the day's energy use in MWh. It lets you compare Zcash ASICs, Bitcoin ASICs and GPUs on power, but it excludes power cost, fees, machine cost and every other expense.

Do the Oct 13 numbers show that one asset beats the others?

No. They show what three kinds of machine grossed per MWh on one day, under one set of assumptions. Each figure depends on a different moving input: ZEC price and Zcash network hashrate, bitcoin hashprice, or GPU rental rate and utilization. None of them includes capex, fees or risk, so they cannot tell you which asset is better for you.

How do I check revenue per MWh against my own power cost?

Multiply your all-in rate per kWh by 1,000: $0.07/kWh is $70 per MWh and $0.08/kWh is $80. Then work out your machine's gross revenue per MWh from current hashprice and its efficiency, and see how much is left. The profitability calculator does this with your numbers, and you can contact us with hosting questions.