BT Daily News: How Much Does It Cost to Mine 1 Bitcoin? and more…
1. How Much Does It Cost to Mine 1 Bitcoin?
Bitcoin’s production cost is an estimate of the average cost for mining one Bitcoin per day. This cost depends primarily on the electricity costs incurred by miners for running their machines, but there are other variables.So long as the price of Bitcoin holds above this cost, a mining operation remains profitable, and many market observers suggest that production costs also can serve “as the lower bound of Bitcoin’s price range in a bear market.”
According to the New York-based bank, Bitcoin’s bottom could very well be a lowly $13,000, marking a 45% drop from today’s prices.
“While clearly helping miners’ profitability and potentially reducing pressures on miners to sell Bitcoin holdings to raise liquidity or for deleveraging, the decline in the production cost might be perceived as negative for the Bitcoin price outlook going forward,” JPMorgan strategists, led by Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou, wrote.
Other costs, including infrastructure, hardware, and hiring employees to maintain mining farms, can also vary.
“The cost of production varies greatly based on the kind of rigs, and the cost of power, but also labor costs and facility maintenance,” Zach Bradford, CEO of Bitcoin mining firm CleanSpark, confirmed with Decrypt.
2. Bradford added that his team’s analysis puts the production cost even lower than JPMorgan’s.
“With the majority of public miners running latest [generation] rigs, and with strategic power management contracts in place, our internal research puts the number closer to $12,000 for public miners,” he said. “But even within a company, it will vary by facility. CleanSpark, for example, has facilities that are lower than that.”That means that as long as Bitcoin stays above $12,000, public miners would still turn a profit.
Crypto miner explains how Bitcoin mining stabilizes grids
2022 was “the perfect storm” for Bitcoin miners, according to Jaime Leverton, CEO of Hut8 Mining — one of the largest crypto miners and digital asset experts in the space.
Web3, once a buzzword in the crypto space, has since become a hotly tipped trend for 2023, attracting 10-figure-plus investments from Hong Kong to Abu Dhabi. The entrance of Hut 8 into Web3 could usher more Bitcoin-only companies to consider opportunities in the Web3 space.
The interview concluded with an astute discussion of Bitcoin mining and its role in protecting the environment. Leverton is a founding member of the Bitcoin Mining Council, a group engaged in dispelling the misinformation surrounding Bitcoin mining and seeking to “tackle some of the misinformation that was coming out around Bitcoin’s energy use, the sources of energy.”
Furthermore, Bitcoin mining can help to stabilize grids. Texas recently tinkered with the idea of using software to further balance the supply and demand of electricity to its grid using Bitcoin miners. Similar to Texas, Canada also endures temperature extremes. The wild variations require expert grid balancing.
3. Bitcoin miner CleanSpark wil 16.000 rigs aansluiten op nieuwe locatie
Bitcoin mining company CleanSpark is opening a new location in Washington, Georgia. The plan is to connect 16,000 mining rigs to the bitcoin network here.These thousands of miners should yield a total computing power of 2.2 EH/s. For perspective, that would amount to about 1% of current global computing power.
In total, CleanSpark hopes to get 8.7 EH/s operational at this new location. An amount of $16 million would be involved in the acquisition of the location.
"The new mining 'fleet' will consist of Antminer S19j Pro and Antminer S19 XP models, the newest and most energy efficient bitcoin mining rigs available today."
CleanSpark also bought a location in Washington last year. Here they convert 36 MW into computing power (and thus into new bitcoin). With the new location, they want to use another 50 MW.
“This second phase doubles the size of the existing operation. We look forward to expanding our relationship with the community in Washington City and bringing the work that comes with this expansion.”
In addition, they use "mainly low-carbon energy sources" at this location, according to the press release. According to them, it is therefore one of the most energy-efficient and sustainable bitcoin mining places in the world.
Although most mining companies have had a rough year, CleanSpark grew significantly. They saw their computing power rise from 2.1 EH/s in January 2022 to 6.2 EH/s in December of last year.
At the same time, the financial malaise among competitors was complete. Compute North has been declared bankrupt, Core Scientific is at a loss and Argo Blockchain was also in need of money.