Parman - Activate OP_GFY now!! on Nostr: A quick explanation of how to assess a Bitcoin miner for profitability... Let's take ...

A quick explanation of how to assess a Bitcoin miner for profitability...

Let's take the S21 Pro.

It has a hash rate of 234 TH/s. The world is hashing at 750M TH/s, so that machine will contribute to the following fraction of the world hash rate...

234/750,000,000 = 0.000000312

Cool.

That means, if left on all day, it should generate the total world bitcoin reward for the day multiplied by that percentage...

450 bitcoin x 0.000000312 = 0.00014040 bitcoin (14,040 stats)

So the S21 Pro produces 14k sats per day if left on.

The next question is how much that costs per day.

The machine is rated at 3510 Watts, or 3.51 kW, 3.51 kilojoules per second.

Electricity prices are in $/kWhr
($/energy). BTW, Energy is kW (kJoules/second) multiplied by 1 hr (ie E / time x time) = Energy.

So 3.51kW * 1hr = 3.51kWhr is the amount of energy used in 1 hour by this machine, and x 24 = 84.24 kWhr in one day.

How much does 84.24 kWhr, which was used in the day to produce 14k sats, cost?

If your electricity price is 0.06c per kWhr, then it costs:

84.24 kWhr x 0.06 $/kWhr = $5.05 per day.

So $5.05 to produce 14k sats. At what price are you effectively "buying" bitcoin? We need the units $/bitcoin...

5.05 ÷ 0.00014040(ie 14k sats) = $35968

The current market price is $72,000

It means that if you pay full price for the s21 Pro ($6318), and have cheap electricity at 0.06c/kWhr (I pay around 20c US btw where I live), you will be mining bitcoin profitably, but... you need to recover the cost of the ASIC.

$72000 x 0.0001404 bitcoin means that you're earning about $10.10 per day in bitcoin, and paying $5.05 in electricity. $5 per day profit will take a while to pay off that $6,318 miner!! (3.46 years)

How can it make sense? Answer:

Well, if the bitcoin price doubles, guess what happens to the value of the ASIC? That will probably roughly double also - if it doesn't many people will buy them, bid up their price, and by turning them on also make mining less profitable. For the miner who got in early, that reduction in profitability is compensated for by a capital gain on the equipment.

Meanwhile, they are still mining somewhat profitably - They'll be mining less than 14k sats/day as the hashrate goes up, but those sats will be worth more. And their daily costs are static.

Another way to put it...

MINING COST FOLLOWS PRICE

...not the other way around as with every other commodity in nature. For everything else, the price follows the cost to produce. I like to call it "anchored" to the cost of production. For Bitcoin, the cost to produce is anchored to the price, and this is fundamentally due to the difficulty adjustment, which keeps the daily production constant regardless of price.

OK, that was a long explanation, not quick, sorry, I lied.

Here's the other thing that most people don't think about...

That $6k miner that was bought hoping for a bitcoin price pump... what if you just bought $6k worth of bitcoin today? You probably would end up with more sats.

Mining is fun but opportunity cost is a bitch.