this post was submitted on 01 May 2025
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[–] bjorney@lemmy.ca 101 points 2 months ago (16 children)

New data tells us that mining a single Bitcoin or one BTC costs the largest public mining companies over $82,000 USD, which is nearly double the figure it did the previous quarter. Estimates for smaller organisations say you need to spend about $137,000 to get that single BTC in return. BTC is currently only valued at $94,703 USD, which seems to be a problem in the math department.

Bitcoin mining will always be profitable for the people with the cheapest electricity and largest economies of scale. There is a difficulty adjustment algorithm in the protocol that ensures this. When the price tanks people turn off thier miners, difficulty adjusts downwards, and then it takes less electricity to find a block.

tl;dr title is wrong

[–] kbal@fedia.io 4 points 2 months ago

If we're at the point where it takes "economy of scale" to remain in the game then the average miner must have invested in a whole lot of hardware and such. What happens when the cost of financing the premises and equipment outweighs the meagre returns over electricity cost from keeping things running? There could be periods where nobody's making money. Not that I have any idea if we're in one.

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