The Antminer S19 series remains one of the most researched and widely referenced ASIC families in the Bitcoin mining industry. First released in 2020, these units powered a large portion of global hashrate through multiple market cycles and became a foundational component of many early industrial-scale operations.
Today, more advanced and energy-efficient miners have entered the market, and the S19 series is no longer considered the leading option for new deployments. However, the S19 models still play an important role in understanding ASIC evolution, fleet composition across the network, and the economics of earlier-generation hardware.
This guide provides a clear, factual overview of the S19 lineup, its specifications, efficiency profiles, price history, and profitability dynamics, so miners and investors can evaluate the hardware accurately in the context of current market standards. For a more comprehensive overview of all ASIC hardware, see our guide to Understanding the Bitcoin Mining Rig Market.
Bitmain’s S19 family includes several well-known models:
These machines were widely adopted due to their reliability and relatively strong efficiency during 2020–2022. The S19j Pro, in particular, became one of the most common units used by industrial miners.
According to the SHA-256 Mining Rig Index on hashrateindex.com, Antminer S19’s were first launched for pre-sale in Q1 2020 at prices below $3k per unit. BTC price was hovering below $10k at the time, which explains why the USD price of the machines was so low.
As BTC price began to increase rapidly at the end of 2020, so too did the prices of Antminer S19’s, at one point reaching 4x their original price in April 2021 when BTC reached new all-time highs above $60k. Mining rig prices corrected sharply across the board when BTC price dropped mid-year, but have since rebounded.
Now in Q4 2021, average prices of S19-series miners are back above $10k, with the most efficient and highest hashrate models like the S19 Pro and S19j Pro being more expensive ($11k+). We expect that difficulty will continue to adjust upward at a rapid rate as more of these new-generation mining machines get deployed and as Chinese miners continue to relocate their machines to newly-built infrastructure elsewhere in the world. However, BTC price can outpace difficulty growth and put even more pressure on bitcoin ASIC hardware prices, driving them to new all-time highs.
The chart above shows the historical performance of the Antminer S19 since it launched in May 2020. You can see the impact of key events such as the price runup in late 2020 and 2021, as well as the China mining ban and subsequent difficulty drop in June 2021. You can also see the hardware appreciating from $5k at the time it launched to now being valued over $10k in the ASIC market.
This gives you an idea of how price, difficulty, and transaction fees impact bitcoin mining profitability and the volatility involved in the real world. In order to make decisions about buying bitcoin mining hardware, you should also look at projections of mining rig profitability in the following years. You can do this by using a mining profitability calculator that enables you to adjust BTC price and difficulty over time. For example, the chart below shows the projected 3-year profitability of one Antminer S19 Pro when network difficulty increases by 4% per month and BTC price is constant.
You’ll notice that monthly revenue and profit abruptly drop in Month 31. This is due to the halving which will occur at Block #840,000, decreasing the block reward from 6.25 BTC to 3.125 BTC per block. Nonetheless, the Antminer S19 Pro remains profitable for all 36 months even as difficulty is increasing and price is not.
While the above projections give us an extremely conservative case, it isn’t all that realistic unless you’re bearish on BTC. For the bitcoin bulls, it’s worth also looking at potential mining profitability for bitcoin machines if BTC price increases over time, as shown below.
The Antminer S19 series played a major role in industrializing Bitcoin mining and remains one of the most researched ASIC families in the world. While no longer the first choice for new deployments, understanding S19 performance, efficiency, and historical market behavior provides valuable context for miners analyzing hardware strategies, second-hand opportunities, or long-term fleet planning.
For miners evaluating equipment today, the S19 series serves as a reference point, but modern ASICs provide the efficiency and scalability required for competitive operations moving forward.
