The whole argument, with the numbers attached
A mining pool is only worth joining if a mined cat is worth more than it cost to mine. This page shows that arithmetic at the live price, at the size we would actually trade, and forward along the epoch curve — including the epochs where it stops working.
Cost side
Losing a race costs gas and returns nothing, so the loss rate is charged against every cat actually won.
- Epoch mint price
- 0.1637 ETH
- Races lost per win
- 0.00
- Gas per lost race
- 0 ETH
- Gas drag per cat won
- 0 ETH
- All-in cost
- 0.1637 ETH
Burn leg
A cat burned inside its own epoch mints the full reward. Sold into the hook’s pool, priced with real slippage.
- $HASH minted
- 1,000
- Spot price
- 1.719e-5 ETH
- Pool depth
- 9.272 ETH / 539.2k $HASH
- Slippage at size
- 5.17%
- Net proceeds
- 0.0163 ETH
Rent leg
Keep the cat instead and it earns from everyone who mints after you — 65% of each mint price, split across every cat still alive.
- Rent share of a mint
- 65%
- Live cats sharing it
- 5,800
- Per cat, per mint
- 0.000018 ETH
- Mints per day
- 3
- Per cat, per day
- 0.000046 ETH
The squeeze ahead
Mint cost doubles every epoch while the burn reward stays fixed at 1,000 $HASH. Holding the $HASH price flat, the burn leg goes negative quickly — so the honest question is not “what does it yield” but “how far must $HASH move to keep up”. The offsetting force is real: 30% of every mint price is spent buying $HASH back.
| Epoch | Cats | Mint price | Burn proceeds (flat $HASH) | Margin | $HASH breakeven | Move required | Cumulative buyback |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 10 | 8,192 | 0.1637 | 0.0163 | -0.1474 | 1.637e-4 | +852% | 683.316 |
| 11 | 16,384 | 0.3275 | 0.0163 | -0.3112 | 3.275e-4 | +1805% | 2,293 |
| 12 | 32,768 | 0.6552 | 0.0163 | -0.6389 | 6.552e-4 | +3710% | 8,734 |
| 13 | 65,536 | 1.311 | 0.0163 | -1.294 | 1.311e-3 | +7522% | 34,501 |
| 14 | 131,072 | 2.621 | 0.0163 | -2.605 | 2.621e-3 | +15145% | 137,574 |
| 15 | 262,144 | 5.243 | 0.0163 | -5.226 | 5.243e-3 | +30390% | 549,878 |
What the exit actually pays
Every quoted margin ends in one trade: selling $HASH into a single constant-product pool holding 9.272 ETH against 539.2k $HASH. Depth is finite, so size costs money. This is priced with the pool’s own 5.00% fee and real slippage — not at spot.
| Cats burned at once | $HASH sold | At spot | Actually received | Slippage | Per cat | All-in cost | Margin |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1.0k | 0.0172 | 0.0163 | 5.17% | 0.0163 | 0.1637 | -0.1474 |
| 2 | 2.0k | 0.0344 | 0.0326 | 5.33% | 0.0163 | 0.3274 | -0.2948 |
| 5 | 5.0k | 0.0860 | 0.0810 | 5.83% | 0.0162 | 0.8184 | -0.7374 |
| 10 | 10.0k | 0.1719 | 0.1605 | 6.64% | 0.0161 | 1.637 | -1.476 |
| 25 | 25.0k | 0.4299 | 0.3911 | 9.01% | 0.0156 | 4.092 | -3.701 |
| 50 | 50.0k | 0.8597 | 0.7506 | 12.69% | 0.0150 | 8.184 | -7.433 |
| 100 | 100.0k | 1.719 | 1.389 | 19.23% | 0.0139 | 16.368 | -14.979 |
The curve you are buying into
Both sides of HashCats double every epoch: the price of a cat and the number of cats in the epoch. That makes each epoch cost four times the last in total ETH, and it is the single most important fact about the timing of a deposit.
Mint price by epoch
ETH per cat. Doubles at every boundary — 0.00016 × (2ᵉ − 1).
ETH the epoch collects in total
Epoch size × mint price. The hook spends 30% of this buying $HASH back off the market.
- Epoch
- 10
- Cats minted
- 9,796
- Left in epoch
- 6,580
- Time to boundary
- 2614d 23h
- Price after it
- 0.3275 ETH
- Supply cap
- None
- What stops it
- Work
- Practical end
- 17.0k–20.0k cats
- Around epoch
- 11
- Work target now
- 35 bits
- Rent to live cats
- 65%
- To hook buybacks
- 30%
- Royalty
- 5%
- Bought back so far
- 281.056 ETH
- $HASH destroyed
- 2.6M
The asset on the other side of the trade
The burn leg converts work into $HASH and $HASH into ETH. Its price is therefore the pool’s revenue line, and the reason we publish a breakeven instead of a yield.
$HASH price
Burned cats mint $HASH; the hook spends 30% of every mint buying it back. This is the pool's exit for the burn leg.
Market and depth
Supply grows only when cats are burned, and shrinks only when the hook buys.
- Supply
- 4.9M
- Minted by burns
- 3.9M
- Bought back and burned
- 2.6M
- Pool depth (ETH)
- 9.272 ETH
- Pool depth ($HASH)
- 539.2k
- Swap fee
- 5.00%
- 24h volume
- 0.1469 ETH
- Swaps in 24h
- 14
- Queue waiting to buy
- 0 ETH
Burn it or keep it
Every cat we win gets routed once. Burning realises cash today at a known slippage; keeping it earns ETH rent from every later mint, forever, but only pays back over time. The pool picks per cat, and the current answer is here.
Burn now
- Proceeds
- 0.0163 ETH
- Cost
- 0.1637 ETH
- Margin
- -0.1474 ETH
- Return on cost
- -90.0%
- Settles in
- One block
- Ends the cat
- Yes — no rent after
Keep it for rent
CHOSEN- Rent per day, today
- 0.000046 ETH
- Rent to the end, diluted
- 0.1058 ETH
- Cost
- 0.1637 ETH
- Days to recover cost
- 3546d 3h
- Depends on
- the collection reaching 17,000
- Burn reward if delayed
- halves each epoch waited