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

[–] Vent@lemm.ee 2 points 2 months ago

There is nothing in the algorithm tied to BTC price. Sure, you'll likely tend to get less miners as the price decreases, but that doesn't guarantee that it's profitable. Plenty of people, organizations, governments, etc do things that aren't immediately profitable and may never be.

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