Bitcoin mining — a fleet underwritten in the storm, backtested against the market
Financial model case study by Giorgi Zazadze. A Bitcoin mining financial model built in August 2020 — five months after the COVID crash, three months after the halving: a 7,500-unit Antminer S19 Pro scenario (825 PH/s, $18.5M of hardware at reference price, half settled in Bitcoin, half financed with an 8-quarter amortising loan), seven ASIC generations compared on NPV, IRR and breakeven electricity price, and a daily engine of 1,461 day-columns across 89 difficulty epochs. The model assumed difficulty growth of 2% per epoch and Bitcoin rising only 0.7% per epoch from $11,855. Backtest against reality: actual end-2023 difficulty came in 26% below the modeled path and price 92% above it; replaying the same fleet on actual daily difficulty and prices yields 4,528 BTC and $154.3M of revenue against the modeled 3,176 BTC and $48.4M — 3.2 times the modeled revenue. Sources: Bitcoin network consensus data and the blockchain.info composite price index (cross-checked against CoinGecko), FRED M2SL for the monetary context. This page is an interactive deck — enable JavaScript for the full experience, or see giorgizazadze.com.