Buying and hosting crypto mining machines

The claim

“ZEC mining is still on fire! Bitmain Antminer Z15 Pro 840k are still making $18,720 per year. Bitmain Antminer Z15k 565k are still making $11,520 per year. Extrapolate that math with 5 units of each. That is $151,200 per year simply by mining. Name another passive” (cut off here as collected; a link follows)

@MuskMiners, 6 October 2026 (date worked out from the tweet’s ID number), 21 views¹

The store muskminers.com links to this account, sells both machines and offers hosting¹¹¹². The page judges the scheme, not the people who tweet about it.

“Mining” means running a machine that is paid in newly issued coins. These machines mine Zcash (ZEC) and cannot mine Bitcoin¹⁵. “Hosting” means a company runs your machine and bills you for the power.

The sums

The tweet’s text gives no machine price, hosting cost or coin price; we did not open its link¹. Its figures equal $52 a day for the larger machine (our sum)¹. That is at or slightly above the top of what calculator sites showed that week: about $41 to $50 a day before electricity on 10 October 2026²⁴⁵. It is income before costs, not profit.

On 13 October the store listed the machines at $9,450 and $9,500, so the tweet’s ten, five of each, cost $94,750 (our sum)¹²¹⁵⁶⁸. The store says “all sales are final & non-refundable”¹⁴. None was ready to ship: batches arrive in January or March, three to five months after payment¹⁵⁶⁸.

At the 10 October figures the ten bring in about $126,500 to $149,500 a year before costs (our sums)²³⁴. Hosting at the store’s 8 cents per kilowatt-hour takes about $17,700 to $19,100, a rate we could not confirm for Zcash machines (our sums)¹¹. A pool, which shares rewards among miners, takes 2% to 4%; our sums use 2%¹⁸. That leaves about $105,000 to $127,000 before tax, repairs and downtime, about 16% to 31% below the tweet’s figure (our estimate)¹¹¹¹⁸. That repays the machines in 9 to 11 months of running, counted from the day they start, if the coin price and the number of rival machines stay frozen (our estimate)¹²⁶⁸.

Neither has. Zcash fell about 72% in under four months, to about $197 on 8 March 2026, and peaked at $1,653 on 27 September, about nine days before the tweet¹⁶. At $229, the price in late March to early April 2026, with today’s network size, the ten take more than ten years to repay (our estimate)^2461118.

Most “buy a machine and host it” offers are for Bitcoin, where the sums are thinner. The store’s Antminer S21 XP, $3,952 on 13 October, earned about $10.65 a day against $7.00 of hosting, and at these retail rates does not repay unless the Bitcoin price rises or competition falls (our estimate)^11242569.

What happens to most people who try

We found no data on what share of small buyers recover the cost of their machines.

Each machine now mines about 70% fewer coins than a year ago (our sum)⁹. More machines are coming: Fortitude, an industrial miner, says in a press release that it ordered 9,000 of the larger machine in July at $3,499 each, roughly a quarter on top of today’s network (our sum)⁴⁹³².

The upside

We found no verified account from any buyer, so we rebuilt what earlier purchases would have earned by 10 October 2026 (our estimates). A machine at December 2025’s lowest advertised price, $1,598, would have about $7,600 left after hosting, several times its price even at the top US duty rate⁶⁹¹⁰⁶¹. At March’s $3,590 the figure is about $6,000, or about $4,700 after a 60-day wait, above that listing before duty⁶⁹¹⁰. One bought at $6,999 at the end of June would have collected about $3,200, under half its price²⁷⁹.

The first two are advertised prices before shipping and duty, not confirmed sales¹⁰. The store’s archived hosting pages from January and April 2026 list no Zcash machine, so hosting may not have been on offer⁷⁰.

For one larger machine bought today for March delivery, our model leaves between a small loss and about $8,000 in the 12 months after payment, and about $3,200 if the price holds and competition grows 10% a month^24111518. It leaves out a proposed change to Zcash’s rules, not adopted, that on our reading would halve a machine’s coin income²⁰.

What it takes to compete

From 1 August to 10 October the lowest advertised price for the larger machine rose about 2.7 times for January delivery; its daily income at market prices rose about 1.9 to 2.2 times (our sums)²⁴⁶¹⁰. Today’s price already reflects the rise.

To tell early: redo the sum at half the coin price with 10% more competition each month. Ask for the hosting contract, and whether you can see the machine’s output in your own pool account. If the machine’s price rose faster than its daily income over three months, you are late.

Who else makes money from it

The buyer is paid last, in a coin whose price moves. The seller and the host, here one company, are paid first in dollars, and the pool takes its cut¹¹¹²¹⁸. Nothing we read shows that the store fails to deliver.