Zcash mining now generates roughly four times more revenue per megawatt-hour than Bitcoin mining, according to research Grayscale published on September 11. The asset manager said a single top-tier Zcash machine earns about twice the daily reward of a comparable Bitcoin rig.
The math comes from Grayscale Research analyst Michael Pandl, who noted that Bitcoin miners collectively still earn far more in absolute terms, roughly $35 million in daily block rewards against about $2 million for Zcash. But on a per-machine and per-unit-of-power basis, the privacy coin pays better right now, and that gap has pulled new computing power onto the network fast.
Zcash’s total mining activity has grown more than 2.5 times since the start of 2026, measured in standardized hashpower, according to Grayscale. The network now runs at about 91 percent of its record 27.9 GSol/s, per data cited by Blockonomi.
The numbers behind the gap
The hardware differs, which makes direct comparison imperfect. Zcash uses the Equihash algorithm and Bitmain’s Z15 Pro ASIC, while Bitcoin runs SHA-256 machines like the S23 Pro. Still, the revenue spread is wide enough that the caveat matters less than the direction.
According to analysis from The Energy Mag cited by Cryptopolitan, a Z15 Pro generated about $727 per megawatt-hour in August, easing to around $708 by early September as more machines joined. A state-of-the-art S23 Pro mining Bitcoin returned about $179 per megawatt-hour, and an older S21 Pro managed $113.45. High-performance computing colocation, the business Bitcoin miners have pivoted toward as a hedge, earns roughly $222 per megawatt-hour. Only AI cloud workloads, near $941 per megawatt-hour, beat the Zcash rig.
| Workload | Revenue per MWh |
|---|---|
| Zcash (Z15 Pro) | ~$708 |
| AI cloud workloads | ~$941 |
| HPC colocation | ~$222 |
| Bitcoin (S23 Pro) | ~$179 |
| Bitcoin (S21 Pro) | ~$113 |
Grayscale cautioned that the figures were not calculated by running the same machine on both networks, since the algorithms and silicon differ entirely. The comparison is directional rather than a like-for-like benchmark. Even so, the direction is unambiguous, and it explains the migration.
A rally that pays the miners
ZEC crossed $1,000 on September 4 for the first time in nearly a decade and pushed toward $1,250 last week, putting the privacy coin into the top 10 by market value at roughly $20 billion. The token is up more than 2,300 percent over the past year. Grayscale’s spot Zcash ETF, ZCSH, listed on NYSE Arca on August 25 and passed $500 million in assets within two weeks, including a roughly $100 million contribution from DCG International Investments. Options trading on the fund has started as well.
The price move also triggered a heavy short squeeze. About $49 million in ZEC short positions were liquidated in 24 hours as price broke above $1,000, and one trader associated with whale Garrett Jin lost more than $18.5 million on a 32,760 ZEC short opened near $444, according to CoinGlass data cited by CoinMarketCap. ZEC open interest in futures and perpetuals sat near $2 billion during the breakout, which amplified the forced covering.
The move is leading the privacy coin bid as traders treat shielded transfers as a hedge against on-chain surveillance.
That framing, from analysts at Crypto Banter, captures why demand formed at all. Zcash uses zero-knowledge proofs to shield transaction details by default, and interest in financial privacy has grown as on-chain analytics firms and AI-driven monitoring expand across public blockchains. Grayscale Research argued in an August 25 report that Zcash could counter Bitcoin’s network effects in the currency segment, where Bitcoin holds 93 percent of market value, by targeting demand for privacy and connectivity rather than competing head-on.
Grayscale frames the mining boom as a reinforcing cycle. A higher ZEC price makes mining more attractive, fresh machines raise the network hash rate, and the added computing power strengthens the cost of attacking the chain. Better security, in that view, supports the asset’s case as credible infrastructure for private payments.
The catch for miners
There is a catch, and miners feel it first. Every new machine competes for the same block rewards, so individual returns shrink as the hash rate climbs. The Z15 Pro’s take already sits about 3 percent below its August peak. Grayscale’s own math shows how fragile the edge is: a 50 percent drop in ZEC’s price would cut revenue per megawatt-hour toward $360, still above Bitcoin’s current rate but no longer a fourfold premium. A return to 2024-era prices, when ZEC traded under $100, would leave the hardware idle.
The recent 11 percent daily drop in ZEC during Friday’s broader selloff gave miners a preview of that risk. Profitability tracks price, and price in a leveraged market can move faster than any mining rig can be repurposed.
Why Bitcoin miners are watching
The comparison lands awkwardly for the Bitcoin mining industry. Public miners sold an estimated 28,000 to 32,000 BTC in the first half of 2026, worth about $1.78 billion at the time, much of it to fund a pivot toward AI and high-performance computing that has absorbed more than $70 billion in commitments, according to Crypto Briefing. Since the bull market began on August 17, tracked miners have returned a median of just 1.8 percent against Bitcoin’s 22 percent gain, per The Block, with only rig maker Canaan keeping pace.
Zcash mining is not a like-for-like escape hatch, since the hardware and algorithm differ from Bitcoin’s. But the revenue gap shows where block rewards currently pay best, and it explains why hashrate is migrating toward a coin most of the industry ignored a year ago, when ZEC changed hands below $50.
Institutional interest is following the miners. Cypherpunk Technologies, backed by Winklevoss Capital, closed a $33.33 million deal in August to acquire 4.2 GSol/s of hashpower, giving it roughly 18 percent of the Zcash network’s total mining capacity, one of the largest corporate exposures to ZEC mining disclosed to date.
Regulatory risk still hangs over the whole category. ZCSH’s listing gave privacy coins a regulated on-ramp in the US for the first time, but shielded transactions remain a sensitive topic for lawmakers, and the ETF carries a 2.5 percent expense ratio, the highest among major crypto funds. If that access narrows, the mining economics that look so generous today would reprice quickly.