Key Takeaways 

1. Kaspa ASICs went from printing money to bleeding it. At the 2024 peak, a single Antminer KS3 netted well over $100 a day at $0.07/kWh. Today that same machine loses roughly $4 a day at the same power rate, and about 87% of Kaspa ASICs are underwater. 
2. Zcash ASICs are in the printing phase right now. An Antminer Z15 Pro nets an estimated $1,600 to $1,700 a month (roughly $55 a day) at $0.07 to $0.08/kWh. That is the same “making money” stage Kaspa miners remember, right before the reversal. 
3. Price and difficulty move on different clocks. Price can halve in weeks. Network difficulty stays elevated for months because the ASICs never leave. When those lines cross, high-cost miners lose money first. 

Every proof-of-work coin that runs hot follows the same arc. A new chain launches, early miners print money, ASICs flood in, difficulty explodes, and then price reverts, leaving the miners who showed up late and paid retail power underwater. Kaspa (KAS) just lived the full cycle. Zcash (ZEC) is up over 1,000% in the past year and drawing the same crowd. So the question every miner should be asking before they buy an Equihash rig: will Zcash follow Kaspa’s path? Here’s the timeline that tells you what to watch for. 

The Kaspa Timeline: How the Money Came and Went 

November 2021. Fair launch, GPU era. with no pre-mine and no presale, Kaspa went live on the kHeavyHash algorithm built for graphics cards. Hobbyists mined it on gaming GPUs against almost no competition. Margins were excellent because almost nobody was hashing. 

Mid-2023. ASICs arrive, GPUs die. The first dedicated KAS ASICs hit the market (IceRiver’s KS series, followed by Bitmain). Network hashrate surged, difficulty followed, and GPU mining went to negative margin almost overnight. The early ASIC buyers who got machines in the ground first captured the reward. 

Mid-2024. Peak earnings. With KAS near its all-time high, a single Antminer KS3 netted well over $100 a day at $0.07/kWh power, enough that early buyers paid the machine off in under two months. The calculators looked unbeatable, and buyers rushed in at peak prices for both coins and hardware. 

2024 to 2026. The reversal. KAS fell more than 80% from that high while difficulty stayed elevated, because the ASICs never left the network. Today that same KS3 loses roughly $4 a day at $0.07/kWh, and about 87% of Kaspa ASICs are unprofitable at that rate. Only the newest, most efficient model still clears a small margin. The machines still hash. The math no longer works, unless your power is cheap. 

The lesson isn’t “Kaspa was a scam.” It mined exactly as designed. The lesson is that price and difficulty move on different clocks. Price can halve in weeks. Difficulty stays high for months. When those two lines cross, high-cost miners lose money on hardware that was printing it a quarter earlier. 

Is Zcash Set Up the Same Way? 

Zcash’s 2026 setup might rhyme with Kaspa’s. ZEC is rallying hard, institutional infrastructure is being built (Foundry launched an institutional ZEC pool, Grayscale filed to convert its trust to an ETF), and Equihash ASICs like the Antminer Z15 Pro are profitable, an estimated $1,600 to $1,700 per month net at $0.07 to $0.08/kWh today. That is the “making money” phase Kaspa miners remember fondly. 

What’s different: Zcash is a decade-old chain with an established ASIC market, not a fresh launch, so the GPU-to-ASIC shock already happened years ago. What’s the same: if price mean-reverts while difficulty holds, the miners who survive won’t be the ones who timed the top. They’ll be the ones with the lowest power cost. One extra variable worth tracking on Zcash specifically is the long-discussed possibility of a move to proof-of-stake, which would strand Equihash ASICs entirely. For more information about Zcash, check out our article: Zcash Proof-of-Stake Mining Risk. 

The One Variable That Survives Every Cycle 

Both timelines point to the same conclusion. You cannot control the coin price and you cannot control network difficulty. You can control your cost of power. When a KS3 was netting $100+ a day, almost everyone was profitable. At today’s earnings, only the cheapest-power miners still are. Whatever ZEC does next, the miner with low power cost survives a drawdown that shuts off everyone paying retail rates. 

BlockOps runs five owner-operated facilities in Arkansas at $0.08 per kWh transparent pass-through, with curtailment capped at 120 hours per year in writing. That is the kind of cost base that keeps a fleet profitable through the whole cycle, not just the top of it.