Would you run a Zcash home miner? What price and hashrate gets you to buy?

Question

Magic Miner (they make small lottery miners) has been asking home miners on X what a Zcash home miner should look like. Their numbers so far: 50–100 kSol/s, under 120W, small desktop ASIC. One buyer told them $300–350 would get him in.

Not officially announced yet, but they've told us at Helium Deploy it's out in 2 weeks.

For context, the only small Zcash miner today is the 2018 Antminer Z9 Mini (10 kSol/s at 300W).

Big money is eyeing ZEC too: on Oct 6, 2026 the Winklevoss twins' fund filed with the SEC for a spot Zcash ETF (ticker WINK, planned for Nasdaq) and said it may put up to $100M into it. That's a non-binding indication, not a commitment. https://finance.yahoo.com/markets/crypto/articles/winklevoss-twins-plan-invest-100-225107389.html

Would you run one? What price and hashrate would get you to buy one?

jon-heliumdeploy · Answer

Some quick math on why this would be a big jump. The Z9 Mini does 10 kSol/s at 300W, about 33 Sol/s per watt. A box at 50–100 kSol/s under 120W would be roughly 420–830 Sol/s per watt, so 12–25x more efficient and 5–10x the hashrate on less than half the power.

As a lottery miner it works like your Bitaxe does for Bitcoin: you point it solo at a pool and every share is a shot at a whole Zcash block. More kSol/s means more shots per day, nothing guaranteed.

Nothing's announced yet, so no final specs or price. If you'd buy one, the most useful thing you can post here is your number: what price, what hashrate, what wattage would get you in.

abel_solomon · Answer

My bar: 100 kSol/s under 100W and I'm in at $300. At 50 kSol/s it needs to be closer to $200. What's yours?

abel_solomon · Answer

Noise matters too. If this sits next to a Bitaxe it can't sound like a Z9. Would you take less hashrate for a quiet box?

Would you run a Zcash home miner? What price and hashrate gets you to buy?

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