So is Bitcoin Mining Profitable ?
In my opinion in the long term mining Bitcoin could make you some pretty profit but you have to invest in a good mining rig like the Antminer S9, which costs a good amount of money about $2k on Amazon, so for now I would stay away from Altcoins but that’s just my opinion. If you do not have the money or the time necessary you better step away from Bitcoin mining and probably just buy/trade with it or the other currencies.
Is It Still Profitable to mine BITCOIN in 2017?
The answer depends on how much you are willing to invest and the answer is slightly different for each person since the Bitcoin Mining profitability depends on several different factors. Therefore to give you an accurate answer to that, mining profitability calculators were created. Just google one.
The Bitcoin Mining profitability calculators take into account the different parameters like the cost of your hardware or the electricity cost and many other factors and could give you an accurate picture of your projected profit.
What is the Hash Rate?: The mathematical problem your computer has to solveis called the Hash. The Hash Rate is the speed at which these problems are solved. This Hash Rate will increase automatically with the number of Miners that join the Bitcoin network.
This rate could also refer to your miner’s performance. Nowadays Bitcoin miners have different Hash Rates.
A Miners’ performance can be measured in:
- MH/s Mega hash per second
- GH/s Giga hash zper second
- TH/s Terra hash per second
- PH/s Peta hash per second.
What is the Bitcoin Difficulty? : Every 10 minutes The Bitcoin network was designed to create a constant amount of Bitcoins so that the difficulty of solving the problems has to increase in order to adjust with the increase of the Hash. To put it in a nutshell with every miner that joins the network, the mining of Bitcoins becomes harder.
How many Bitcoins per Block? : A constant amount of Bitcoins are created each time a problem is solved. The number of Bitcoins generated per block started out at 50 and it is halved every 210,000 blocks, which happens approximately every 4 years. The current number of Bitcoins gained per block is 12. However very soon the block halving will occur on 21 Jun 2020 and the reward will be downgraded to 6 Bitcoins.
The Power consumption : Be sure to find out the exact power consumption of the miner before you start calculating profitability, each miner consumes different amounts of energy. You can find out easily with a quick search on the Internet. Power consumption is measured in Watts.
The Electricity Rate : Running a Bitcoin miner uses a lot of electricity. In order to calculate the profitability first you have to find out your electricity rate. You can find it on your monthly electricity bill.
What about the Pool fees? : You need to join a mining pool in order to mine Bitcoin. The mining pool is formed by miners that join together so they can mine more effectively. In order to maintain its operations, the platform that brings them together has some sort of fees and once the mining pool manages to mine Bitcoins those profits are distributed amongst the members proportionally with how much work each miner has done, the hash rate.
The Time Frame : When you start to calculate if mining Bitcoin is profitable you will have to take into account a time frame to which you can relate to. The more time you mine, the more Bitcoins you will earn.
How is the Conversion rate? : Nobody knows how the BTC/USD exchange rate will fluctuate in the future so it is pretty hard to predict if mining will be profitable. If you mine in order to gather Bitcoins this should not bother you. However if you plan on converting these Bitcoins in the future into another currency, then this factor will make a major impact.
Profitability decline per year : The most important and unpredictable variable of them. No one can say for sure the rate of miners that are joining the mining network, no one can predict how difficult will mining be in 5 weeks, or either 5 years from now. Therefore this is the reason why nobody is able to answer you once and for all if Bitcoin mining is profitable.