Bitcoin mining isn’t profitable anymore because of energy consumption

Recently cryptocurrencies made so much hype in the market. Many of us thought it could be the next big thing. But after the Bitcoin hype, it seems mining is not profitable anymore because it uses so much energy and expensive machines that we all be in a total loss than what we generate by mining.

Bitcoin Mining

Bitcoin mining and power consumption.

Alex de Vries who is a Financial Economist and a Blockchain Specialist speculates that bitcoin could use up as much as 7.67 Gigawatts of electricity by the end of the year and this will make the digital currency’s electrical consumption more than Austria, which uses about 8.2 Gigawatts every year.

That is almost 0.5% of the world’s energy consumption.

As of now, bitcoin uses over 2.5 Gigawatts of electricity which is comparable to Ireland’s consumption. A single transaction in bitcoin requires the same amount of electricity used by a household in the Netherlands for a month.

Is bitcoin mining worth it?

To be clear in small-scale: a big NO, it is not profitable anymore in small-scale mining anyhow. But if you want a bigger slice of the Pizza better you increase your computing power in whole and invest in some special hardware.

Bitcoin mining is only profitable with special hardware machines like ASIC (Application-Specific Integrated Circuit), it costs more than a thousand dollars. Such hardware is specialized to work on specific tasks like computation and problem-solving that is why it is a most efficient stuff.

If you have thought of utilizing GPU for Bitcoin mining better be ready for paying electricity bills only, as this is the dumbest idea now. You may end up with nothing because the lifespan of GPU is not similar to ASIC, especially for this mining task. Still, we have seen people using this method for testing.

Conclusion.

To sum up everything here, we can clearly say that Bitcoin may have a bright future but as of now, things are costly enough to fail the cryptocurrency market for miners.

Profit is what you get after cutting all the expenses and investments not what you just make after investing in tons.

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Responses

  1. Jordan Avatar
    Jordan

    This is true. I tied Bitcoin mining at home utilizing GPUs for few days and I paid more than double electricity bill that month. What I generated was not close to $2. But I don’t regret for that because I was in my learning mode.

    1. AtulHost Avatar

      Thanks for sharing your experience Jordan. This is the fact that GPUs are not the profitable way to mine bitcoin even in large scale.

  2. Sagar Prajapati Avatar
    Sagar Prajapati

    Bitcoin mining may not be profitable in case of hardware mining (if mining rig is installed) but it is profitable in case of software mining (cloud mining).

    1. AtulHost Avatar

      You are somewhat correct! Cloud mining is profitable but not much now. When we are engaged in such type of Cryptocurrency mining there are profits as well as risks, which is totally based on our right ot wrong choices.

      In our test calculations, we will likely see that some cloud mining services will be profitable for a few initial months or weeks, but as the difficulty level of bitcoin increases, we would probably start to make a loss in four to six months and continuing after. This is the biggest caveat in Cryptocurrency mining these days.

      1. Ciprian C. Avatar
        Ciprian C.

        Right. I am experiencing same thing from last few months. Sometimes difficulties are too high to solve; in result, it uses much more energy that loss is possible.