Cost to Mine 1 BTC in every country

[buwaytress]

Just came across this, published last month, but don't recall seeing anything like it on the forum, so just sharing.

Original article by 911 Metallurgist, it's got the rates for some other crypto too but I'm just going to share the one for Bitcoin: Cost to mine 1 Bitcoin in every country.

I knew Asia was expensive, but not THAT expensive. Also, I think this is the cost of grid electricity. I know in my part of the world, for example, some miners want to experiment with natural gas generators. Far, far cheaper, no one would plug into the grid!

Kuwait, though!

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[hZti]

This is a very interesting graphic since it shows at what price a miner would be selling his coins for and therefore it does influence the market quite a lot. What I think is a big problem is that they don't show the power costs that they actually used to calculate this. In many countries the cost of power can be very different for companies and private persons, so if they don't say the calculate with for example 0,25 USD per KWH then its is not as helpful as it could have been.

[buwaytress]

This is a very interesting graphic since it shows at what price a miner would be selling his coins for and therefore it does influence the market quite a lot. What I think is a big problem is that they don't show the power costs that they actually used to calculate this. In many countries the cost of power can be very different for companies and private persons, so if they don't say the calculate with for example 0,25 USD per KWH then its is not as helpful as it could have been.

But the methodology is based on cost of power -- you can open the original link shared and dig in deeper. Which is why I commented that this pricing isn't entirely accurate, it's only based on commercial consumption cost by directly connecting to power grids. As you know, not all miners would do that, and not all miners pay the same rates -- like it used to be in China, where they'd be able to negotiate independent rates with state energy providers. If the other stats are true (like from Bitcoin Policy Institute numbers) then most miners already are on renewables and alternative energy sources -- so I doubt most of them are paying these rates.

The data's just indicative of how much you'd pay if you just decided to plug in and mine.

[DaveF]

And at least for the US it's using numbers that are very distorted and many times flat out incorrect. Many states have different prices for power in different areas. Discounts for agreed contracted amounts and tons of other variables.
There are other countries that power is cheap but unreliable, I mean they put in North Korea where most people don't have power and except for limited exceptions it's not reliable.
Pretty map but pointless in the end. Not to mention as we all know electricity although a big part is only 1 part of the cost.

-Dave

[Agbe]

This is very good information. to mine crypto in the developing should be the number one place mining should be very costly but from the link you provided, it looks as if they are even more less. mostly Nigeria, which I know very sure that they have not slept with 24/7 hours light and the Map  esteemated it as $22.303. This amount for Nigeria is confusing me because if it is power that is used to determine the cost of mining then Nigerian should be even the number one in the list. Africa is blessed with natural resources even gas but irony is the case.

[philipma1957]

please note I fixed some typos

if you have A S19 THAT DOES 100th and burns 3 kwatts an hour you pretty much have a top of the line unit.

numbers below leave out:
 labor
 repairs
 coin price change
 power price change
 cooling
 infrastructure
 rise or fall in difficulty

also I assume your miner was fully paid off

00 cent power with a 100th machine burning 3kwatts cost is $0.00 it earns $8.81   net $8.81
01 cent power ------------------------------------------------- $0.72  it earns $8.81  net $8.09
02 cent power –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––- $1.44  it earns $8.81   net $7.37
03 ---------------------------------------------------------------- $2.16 it earns $8.81   net $6.65
04 ---------------------------------------------------------------- $2.88 ------------------net $5.93
05 -----------------------------------------------------------------$3.60 ------------------net $5.21
06 -----------------------------------------------------------------$4.32 ------------------net $4.49
07 -----------------------------------------------------------------$5.04 ------------------net $3.77
08------------------------------------------------------------------$5.76 ------------------net $3.05
09 -----------------------------------------------------------------$6.48 ------------------net $ 2.33
10-----------------------------------------------------------------$7.20 -------------------net $1.61
11 ---------------------------------------------------------------- $7.92 ------------------net $0.89



I can tell you since all the costs left out are at least 1 dollar.

  a ton of s19 gear is not paid off many big miners are near death.

As for what it cost per country please in my PA/NY/NJ area alone (just 3 of 50 states) I have over 20 different power points to chose from some over 22 cents some under 6 cents and many in-between,


Now if you put in the gear cost a s19 that does 100th at 3kwatts cost 3,000 to 9,000 dollars

today it may be 4,000 so do I add that cost in? If I do and has 3 cent power. with it not breaking  it makes $5.93 so 4000 to the cost  or wait 675 days of mining to pay it off

and don't count the 4,000 cost to buy it.


But the chart you found does look good. and my thread is jus t a lot of boring black and white type and blank space.

[mikeywith]

This whole study is bullshit, electricity price in Kuwait is 6.5 cents per kWh for "undefined manufacturing" which is where bitcoin falls under, which means even while using the most advanced gear you are nowhere near the 1.4k cost mentioned in this "study".

Using the household prices it ranges from 1.6 cents to 5 cents, but long story short, once you pass 9 KWh a MONTH (which every asic miner will do in a few hours) you jump to the 5 cents tier, the 1.6 cents is for below 3 kWh a month, that isn't enough to mine a fraction of bitcoin, but ya, I understand why they had these numbers incorrect, most people who write such content are lazy, and they still get paid for writing nonsense like that.

I don't know the prices of other countries mentioned in the study, but I am sure that most will be incorrect, so it's safe to assume that this whole thing is just b.s.

[DaveF]

This whole study is bullshit, electricity price in Kuwait is 6.5 cents per kWh for "undefined manufacturing" which is where bitcoin falls under, which means even while using the most advanced gear you are nowhere near the 1.4k cost mentioned in this "study".

Using the household prices it ranges from 1.6 cents to 5 cents, but long story short, once you pass 9 KWh a MONTH (which every asic miner will do in a few hours) you jump to the 5 cents tier, the 1.6 cents is for below 3 kWh a month, that isn't enough to mine a fraction of bitcoin, but ya, I understand why they had these numbers incorrect, most people who write such content are lazy, and they still get paid for writing nonsense like that.

I don't know the prices of other countries mentioned in the study, but I am sure that most will be incorrect, so it's safe to assume that this whole thing is just b.s.

Agreed and since it's just talking about electric rates it leaves off a lot of other factors, some of which Phil touched on above and others that I have discussed in the past. Climate plays a large part. It's better to pay more for electric and mine in a cooler environment to keep cooling costs down vs. cheaper rates but keeping the chillers running full blast all the time.

Reliability and cost of internet. Yes most of us here can run our miners off of a cable modem or whatever. The big players have multiple fiber connections and run their own BGP.

And so on.

-Dave

[philipma1957]

The main problem I have is gear cost.

Pretend I have free power .

When I live in an apartment I had an illegal 10 gauge 240 power source in my apartment.

Did not know about it until we had a huge black out in NYC my entire neighbor hood was black and my ac worked. I found out at that time

this was in the 90's so mining was not a thing.

I knew a guy that did forged jewelry and  that his basement workplace in a Manhattan skyscraper has a tunnel to a 3000 square foot space with about 300 amps of 240 watt power.

Back in the 80's so mining was not being done.

But people with 'free' power and the ability to say run 20 s19's would do 2ph a day which is only

176 usd  day so 21000/176 = 120 days 1 bitcoin  but that gear at best price cost 20 x 4000=

80000 the study leaves that cost out.  So the first btc would be 80k with everything being free but the gear

2 btc would be 80k
3 btc would be 80k
4 btc would be 80k.  and you could argue this means a single btc = 20k cost.

that study leave all this out.

and all of us know that to think 20 s19's will work with out fail for 4 x 119 days is very optimistic.

[buwaytress]

Hard to disagree with any of the points brought up, but I did think the chart (and the other information in the link) was an okay starting point -- a lot more useful than having no data on electricity costs. But probably far less useful to someone who actually would want to start mining.

I strongly agree climate plays a role, I know first-hand the debilitating effects on hardware in tropics (heat is one problem but humidity is often overlooked and in some cooler countries the humidity causes problems on a machine that runs non stop). On the other hand, cost of repairs could be far cheaper in some countries with low energy cost anyway, and that could actually offset better than say, insurance and maintenance in more expensive countries.

I guess a true cost calculation is extremely difficult, gear and maintenance, licensing even (approvals to run commercial enterprise or even specialised equipment).

[0verseer]

This whole study is bullshit, electricity price in Kuwait is 6.5 cents per kWh for "undefined manufacturing" which is where bitcoin falls under, which means even while using the most advanced gear you are nowhere near the 1.4k cost mentioned in this "study".

Using the household prices it ranges from 1.6 cents to 5 cents, but long story short, once you pass 9 KWh a MONTH (which every asic miner will do in a few hours) you jump to the 5 cents tier, the 1.6 cents is for below 3 kWh a month, that isn't enough to mine a fraction of bitcoin, but ya, I understand why they had these numbers incorrect, most people who write such content are lazy, and they still get paid for writing nonsense like that.

I don't know the prices of other countries mentioned in the study, but I am sure that most will be incorrect, so it's safe to assume that this whole thing is just b.s.

Yup, the rest of the charts are bullshit. Most countries use tiered (or step) pricing. Past a certain amount, you're forced to pay more than the typical range for a household. If you registered as a manufacturer/business, you pay in time of use (depending on the time of day, 10PM-4AM is usually the cheapest). Some countries even use the mix of both, tiered within TOU. There is a lot of things that need to take into account for electricity pricing, not just fixed rate.

[Coinfarm ventures]

This is the only source of U.S. power cost which is somewhat reliable:
Why do I say it's somewhat reliable? Because the mining farm locations and power rates that I know of so far correlate with the green areas. This is from public mining farms as well as my personal experience.

https://findenergy.com/

The map displays average residential rate by county, which obviously doesn't include cheaper tariffs that may be available or tiered usage plans. But it's a good starting point to find industrial power. Simply divide the residential price by 2 to get a rough estimate. The exceptions to this rule I can find so far are upstate NY (divide by 3), Long Island (divide by 1.5), Northern NJ/JCPL (divide by 1.5), Central Washington (divide by 1), Delaware (divide by 1.5).

Of course, the recent natural gas price hike is not included, which you'll have to pay for eventually, so use with caution.

[NotATether]

Also, I think this is the cost of grid electricity. I know in my part of the world, for example, some miners want to experiment with natural gas generators. Far, far cheaper, no one would plug into the grid!

Are those natural gas generators actually safe to operate with the amount of power being drawn, without being a fire hazard?

[that is assuming that you've found a dry place outside to host it, as it is not safe to run a generator indoors, from what I have read.]

[hZti]

This is a very interesting graphic since it shows at what price a miner would be selling his coins for and therefore it does influence the market quite a lot. What I think is a big problem is that they don't show the power costs that they actually used to calculate this. In many countries the cost of power can be very different for companies and private persons, so if they don't say the calculate with for example 0,25 USD per KWH then its is not as helpful as it could have been.

But the methodology is based on cost of power -- you can open the original link shared and dig in deeper. Which is why I commented that this pricing isn't entirely accurate, it's only based on commercial consumption cost by directly connecting to power grids.

I know that it is based on power cost, but I would like to see the actual power cost on the graphic. Since this way this is basically a comparison of the electricity prices in every country without telling you what actually the price of the electricity is.

[buwaytress]

Also, I think this is the cost of grid electricity. I know in my part of the world, for example, some miners want to experiment with natural gas generators. Far, far cheaper, no one would plug into the grid!

Are those natural gas generators actually safe to operate with the amount of power being drawn, without being a fire hazard?

[that is assuming that you've found a dry place outside to host it, as it is not safe to run a generator indoors, from what I have read.]

I've only seen one up close, but seen many models for sale only in Southeast Asia. China (duh) and Japan pretty much make hi-tech models, Japan buys gas from my island, actually we still produce way too much and it all gets burnt off (flaring), so demand still a long way off from supply.

They're always outside! Don't look much different from diesel generators, except you pipe in the gas from a separate canister unit (we don't have piped gas AFAIK in most of SEA).

[NotFuzzyWarm]

Also, I think this is the cost of grid electricity. I know in my part of the world, for example, some miners want to experiment with natural gas generators. Far, far cheaper, no one would plug into the grid!

Are those natural gas generators actually safe to operate with the amount of power being drawn, without being a fire hazard?

[that is assuming that you've found a dry place outside to host it, as it is not safe to run a generator indoors, from what I have read.]

These things are BIG and never ran in enclosed areas.. How big? Well for reference and assuming 100% conversion efficiency 1HP=0.7456999 kw of power so for 250kw you will need at least a 336HP engine. Yes some of the largest can provide several MW of power 24x7x365.

Why would you even think there is fire hazard? I'd be more concerned about clueless amateur wiring between the generator and point of usage...
Here is a nice link on Prime power generators and what they are all about - huge differences between them and the more common standby-power gensets.

[stompix]

This whole study is bullshit,

This!
Every single time I hear about the cost of mining a BTC I go from a peaceful panda to an angry grizzly wanting to reap some new ventilation holes in some fine part of the author's body.

I understand why they had these numbers incorrect, most people who write such content are lazy, and they still get paid for writing nonsense like that.

Grab the average electricity price from a chart online, fill the first table in excel, grab the specs of a miner, fill the second row, and wow, you have numbers on how expensive mining a bitcoin is! Majic!!!
Hope this image is sized right (32 inch screen at work) :

I don't know the prices of other countries mentioned in the study, but I am sure that most will be incorrect, so it's safe to assume that this whole thing is just b.s.

Those are numbers for March, half of the world would be mining at a loss, now and if I get the numbers right I'm mining now at about $55k per coin.
Much revenue, such profits, wow bankruptcy!

Also, I think this is the cost of grid electricity. I know in my part of the world, for example, some miners want to experiment with natural gas generators. Far, far cheaper, no one would plug into the grid!

Are those natural gas generators actually safe to operate with the amount of power being drawn, without being a fire hazard?

[that is assuming that you've found a dry place outside to host it, as it is not safe to run a generator indoors, from what I have read.]

These things are BIG and never ran in enclosed areas.. How big? Well for reference and assuming 100% conversion efficiency 1HP=0.7456999 kw of power so for 250kw you will need at least a 336HP engine. Yes some of the largest can provide several MW of power 24x7x365.

Some think of them as those individual generators that you have in your house for backup solutions when the grid is down.
Those real gas powered generators are indeed damn reliable, our largest logistic center was finished before an underground line that need to go under a river was finished by the electric company, so two monsters systems each with 3MW supplied the power for about 3 months, 24/7 with not a single failure.
But god, the noise and the heat, you couldn't hear trucks rushing in and out of the gates when you were standing near them.

[buwaytress]

Some think of them as those individual generators that you have in your house for backup solutions when the grid is down.
Those real gas powered generators are indeed damn reliable, our largest logistic center was finished before an underground line that need to go under a river was finished by the electric company, so two monsters systems each with 3MW supplied the power for about 3 months, 24/7 with not a single failure.
But god, the noise and the heat, you couldn't hear trucks rushing in and out of the gates when you were standing near them.

Haha aye, my state (1 of 14 in my country) produces so much natural gas we've been flaring them since as long as I can remember, more chimneys flaring over the years -- and I'm quite old.

Have had fantasies of using it all up with a few of those power generators, make a deal to power share off all that wasted gas. They really are quite intensive mfs, but I've never seen them in use anywhere else, and from the responses on the thread, yeah I guess most of the world won't recognise them. I'd say they're fairly new tech, but I'm far from being an expert

[mikeywith]

Grab the average electricity price from a chart online, fill the first table in excel, grab the specs of a miner, fill the second row, and wow, you have numbers on how expensive mining a bitcoin is! Majic!!!

Why not, what could possibly go wrong? I mean the worst-case scenario is ending with a "study" that is complete bullshit, not the end of the world, and they still get paid for doing the excel sheet trick.


Honestly, it will be near impossible to know the exact cost of mining bitcoin using just the public information you find on Google, nobody knows exactly how much it costs someone else to mine a bitcoin, simply because, you don't know how much they pay for power, bribe, maintenance and all that, even the simplest part of the equation which is the $/kWh is not easy to figure out, nobody has an answer for how much it cost the large U.S miners, some might have 2 cents rate, some maybe 4 cents, some might magically have access to free power, some might be paying 7 cents and pretend to be paying only 3.5 cents to attract more investors to buy their stocks, nobody has the slightest clue.

With that in mind, why waste time trying to figure out the cost of mining bitcoin when all the variables you need to place in the equation are missing, guessing won't take you anywhere, you will look as dumb as the guys who conducted this "study", I mean we can speculate and chit-chat about how do I think 3-4 cents the average for large U.S miners, but then I will give you a bag of salt to take it with, I won't go to as far as making claims and studies regarding the subject.

[stompix]

With that in mind, why waste time trying to figure out the cost of mining bitcoin when all the variables you need to place in the equation are missing, guessing won't take you anywhere,

The annoying problem with this kind of "study" is that they lead to a second "expert" opinion on price.
You would be amazed how many times I've seen people saying that since the average cost to mine a  BTC is 30 000 there is no way in hell Bitcoin could go below this price, since, I don't know, we will break some rule of the universe if we do so.

Honestly, it will be near impossible to know the exact cost of mining bitcoin using just the public information you find on Google, nobody knows exactly how much it costs someone else to mine a bitcoin, simply because, you don't know how much they pay for power, bribe, maintenance and all that, even the simplest part of the equation which is the $/kWh is not easy to figure out

Quoting this just for the underlined part, yeah , love the nice touch you need there.

I think the only real price quote we can get is for individuals, or for public traded companies, they have to fill expenses and revenue, so if they say we have paid x and we have mined y bitcoins we could approximate, but even so, we don't know if they had the same hashrate all the time, if the power cost were the same, we don't know a lot of stuff. So if it makes a subject to discuss when you're bored or you think that crunching numbers over and over will get you somewhere, yeah it's a nice time killer but I don't think anything will come out of it. And even if we knew it....

They really are quite intensive mfs, but I've never seen them in use anywhere else, and from the responses on the thread, yeah I guess most of the world won't recognise them. I'd say they're fairly new tech, but I'm far from being an expert

Well, don't look at me, we're running low on gas even in our gas pipes around here  so probably I'll be one of the last people seeing one around here.