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Even more importantly, electricity costs weren't accounted for, while they should be pretty relevant.
by danmaz74 9y ago
Even more importantly, electricity costs weren't accounted for, while they should be pretty relevant.
- Analemma_ 9y agoAccording to its Amazon listing, the Antminer S9 consumes 1247 watts at the wall. Assuming he ran it 24/7, over a year he would consume about 11,000 kWh, or about $1,300 at the average U.S. electricity price of $0.12/kWh. Without knowing how much he was paying for power of course we can't know exactly how much he spent, but this certainly doesn't seem like a slam-dunk win, compared to just buying Bitcoins outright. And indeed, it couldn't possibly. The EMH almost guarantees that hobby mining can't be profitable once the coin is popular enough.
- Nursie 9y agoIncidentally, 11K kWh is roughly the average energy consumption of a US household. So given his current return, of 1.01 bitcoins, that means each 2.4 bitcoins mined use around the electricity that a US household does annually. And people wonder why there are those of us who are concerned about the environmental impact...
- hanklazard 9y agoGood point. This sort of waste is one of the big reasons for the (hopefully soon) shift to PoS rather than the current PoW.
- Valodim 9y ago11MWh average, 0.12 cents/kWh?! Power costs more than twice as much in Europe, and the average household uses half as much. No wonder you guys (in a twisted democratic sense of the word) aren't too fond of climate treaties.
- Analemma_ 9y agoI know you're sort of joking, but that doesn't really explain it: the places where power is cheapest in the U.S. are the places where the most renewables are used. Here in Pacific Northwest power is closer to 8 cents/kWh because it's mostly hydro; Texas is cheaper than in the surrounding South because it has more wind power, etc.
- yuhong 9y agoIn this case, the server room location is Allen, Texas, likely paying commercial rates.
- yuhong 9y agoI think commercial rates are generally lower than residential rates, right?
- bigtunacan 9y agoIs anyone tracking the electric costs for mining? I would love to see the stats on that. What about using something like solar to power this? Then you would have your upfront costs for the solar panels, but not have recurring electric costs?
- Analemma_ 9y agoThe biggest mining operations are Chinese and Russian farms getting their power through questionably legal arrangements, so those statistics probably don't exist and wouldn't have much relevance if they did.
- flashdance 9y agoYou can't bribe your way into 30 megawatts of power. The biggest mining operations have legal partnerships with local and national governments.[1] As well, Russia isn't a major place for bitcoin mining: instead, mining is mostly concentrated in Georgia (the country, not the state) and China. [1] http://ifact.ge/en/bitfury/ http://ifact.ge/en/bitfury/
- flashdance 9y agoI used to track where large bitcoin mines were. Mostly they're concentrated around cheap hydroelectricity, with major mines in Labrador (2c/kwh), Central China (varies, but <4c/kwh), and Georgia (unknown, bitfury likely has a special deal with the local government). A few exceptions are Northern China (coal grid @ ~3c/kwh) and Iceland (geothermal @ maybe 5c/kwh, this isn't too clear either). Solar panels are not effective for bitcoin mining, because hardware needs to run 24/7 (a shitload of batteries are needed) and the upfront cost is high.