After a dip that coincided with when the stock market crashed (remember when Bitcoin was supposed to be a hedge against market volatility?), the cryptocurrency is pushing back up toward its all-time high. Despite that, it seems that mining for the cryptocurrency is no longer worth it, even for some larger mining operations. According to data recently published by CoinShares, the cost of electricity and computational power needed to mine for Bitcoin now often exceeds the actual value of the coin.
Here’s how the math breaks down: For large mining companies, it now costs over $82,000 to mine a single Bitcoin, which is currently valued at about $95,000 at the time of publication. That is still technically profitable, though the margins have gotten mighty thin compared to where they were even just one quarter ago. It cost about $56,000 in the third quarter of 2024 to do the necessary computational calculations to mine for a Bitcoin, per CoinShares, so that price has jumped about 47% in just a few months.
Of course, most people are not industrial miners. For smaller organizations, the equation leaves them underwater. For miners in the US who are operating at anything short of a massive scale, it is estimated the price is closer to $137,000 spent to mine for a single BTC. If you’re doing your mining in Germany, the math gets worse: it’ll run about $200,000 for a single coin. Neither price comes close to even Bitcoin’s all-time high, meaning you’ll have to take a loss up front and hold, hoping the cryptocurrency skyrockets to new highs in the future.
The “why” of that sudden price discrepancy has a few prongs to it (and it’s worth noting that some have argued the math on mining hasn’t worked for a while now). The first is the rising cost of electricity, an issue that is hitting the United States and many nations overseas—the result of inflation, Trump’s trade war, and increased demand from high-usage technologies like artificial intelligence. Those tariffs are also driving up the cost of mining equipment, too. There is also the fact that Bitcoin halved about a year ago, a process that lowers the reward for mining and is designed to slow the rate of new coins entering the market. So it’s getting more expensive to mine and there is less payout for doing so.
For most people, nothing of value will be lost by Bitcoin mining ceasing to be profitable. But it does potentially exacerbate Bitcoin’s haves and have-nots problem. For a currency that is supposed to be decentralized and some sort of equalizer in a way that fiat isn’t, the wealth has largely accumulated at the top. According to BitInfoCharts, the top 1% of wallet addresses hold more than 90% of all BTC in circulation. If mining were ever an equalizer, it certainly isn’t now, given the cost. The rich get richer.
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