In his post Bitcoin Does Not Fix It 
I'm not part of the crypto community, other than being on HIVE, and those who know me here will have recognised my knowledge of the field is pretty shoogly. Apart from being a minority part of a investement portfolio, I'm not evangelical for the various crypto offerings available.
That being said, it cannot be denied that Bitcoin has become a serious player in the finance world and there are definite benefits in having holdings in it.
But there's something that has been tickling the back of my brain for a while, which
What is the cost of One Bitcoin?
As of February 20th 2024 to buy 1BTC would cost you around £41,063/$51,850/€47,943 (You can check your currency here).
But that is the value, as of today, and not the cost.
So how do we work out the cost? How much would I have to spend to mine my very own Bitcoin?
There are loads of resources to help in this manner and I didn't scroll particularly far to find one.
The two biggest costs are equipment and electricity. Equipment is as much as you want to pay. A quick search showed second-hand rigs for about a thousand pounds, when I saw a new one over £50,000 I stopped looking.
What about electricity? The article listed above suggests 65% of Bitcoin mining is done in China due to the low cost of electricity in the country.
How much electric is required to mine one Bitcoin? According to analysis by Columbia University in 2022, it's a lot.
I keep seeing costs for a solo-miner as being 266,000 KiloWattHours (KWH) of electricity.
For me, here in the UK, a domestic KWH is effectively capped in 2024 at £0.286. That would mean mining a full Bitcoin this year would cost £76,076 in electricity - though if I were to use 98.5 times the average household electric I reckon my provider would charge commercial rates.
The highest price Bitcoin has ever been is £48,005, on 12 November 2021. The cost of producing one will continue to climb, as does the cost of electric, bot are outpacing the value of bitcoin.
So, unless you can get someone else to pay for your electric - and there are stories of people hooking a mining rig up to their employers or neighbors electricity supply (which is called theft) - in Britain, Bitcoin mining is not a viable practice.
This, surely, adds to
text by stuartcturnbull, art by geralt via pixabay
