Mining 50 BTC for $5.68 Looked Too Expensive 16 Years Ago
A resurfaced Bitcoin forum post from Sept. 7, 2010 shows just how dramatically the economics of mining have changed. At the time, one early Bitcoin user calculated that producing a single block on their home computer would cost roughly $5.68 in electricity. The block subsidy was then 50 BTC, but the miner described the setup as “a net loser.” Mining 50 BTC for $5.68 Looked Too Expensive 16 Years Ago XRP Whales Hold $1.40 as Lummis Warns: ‘No CLARITY Now Means 2030’ – Main Crypto News This Morning Hindsight is 20/20 The user, TTBit, said they had connected a Kill-a-Watt electricity meter to their computer and measured power consumption at roughly 140 watts with the monitors switched off. Their machine was producing around 2,200 kilohashes per second. They estimated that it would take approximately 14 days and two hours to successfully mine one Bitcoin block based on the difficulty. That would consume approximately 47.3 kilowatt-hours of electricity. At an electricity rate of 12 cents per kilowatt-hour, the resulting cost worked out to $5.68. You Might Also Like “It would cost me 47.327 kWh to produce a block; at 12 cents per kWh, thats $5.68 per block, a net loser,” the user wrote. Yes, you got this right: the user was actually debating