According to its Amazon listing, the Antminer S9 consumes 1247 watts at the wall. Assuming he ran it 24/7, over a year he would consume about 11,000 kWh, or about $1,300 at the average U.S. electricity price of $0.12/kWh. Without knowing how much he was paying for power of course we can't know exactly how much he spent, but this certainly doesn't seem like a slam-dunk win, compared to just buying Bitcoins outright.
And indeed, it couldn't possibly. The EMH almost guarantees that hobby mining can't be profitable once the coin is popular enough.
11MWh average, 0.12 cents/kWh?! Power costs more than twice as much in Europe, and the average household uses half as much. No wonder you guys (in a twisted democratic sense of the word) aren't too fond of climate treaties.
I know you're sort of joking, but that doesn't really explain it: the places where power is cheapest in the U.S. are the places where the most renewables are used. Here in Pacific Northwest power is closer to 8 cents/kWh because it's mostly hydro; Texas is cheaper than in the surrounding South because it has more wind power, etc.
Is anyone tracking the electric costs for mining? I would love to see the stats on that. What about using something like solar to power this? Then you would have your upfront costs for the solar panels, but not have recurring electric costs?
The source of the power is irrelevant: you could be selling that electricity to the grid, or offsetting the cost of your home's usage. Buying a solar panel may eliminate the middle man, but there's still lost opportunity cost.
The source of power may be irrelevant to you, but not to me. Where I live net metering is capped at 30% of my utility costs. So if I produce more than 30% of what I use the utility company sucks up the excess that I produce and keeps it for free.
Mostly they're concentrated around cheap hydroelectricity, with major mines in Labrador (2c/kwh), Central China (varies, but <4c/kwh), and Georgia (unknown, bitfury likely has a special deal with the local government). A few exceptions are Northern China (coal grid @ ~3c/kwh) and Iceland (geothermal @ maybe 5c/kwh, this isn't too clear either).
Solar panels are not effective for bitcoin mining, because hardware needs to run 24/7 (a shitload of batteries are needed) and the upfront cost is high.
It doesn't need to but given that the difficulty is ever increasing if you only mine, say, 1/3rd of the time you're at a disadvantage compared to 24/7 miners.
Now if the price of solar electricity is completely free and bitcoin doesn't crash then mathematically there'll come a point when you'll break even but it might take a long while as the mining rewards keep dwindling as difficulty increases while you spend most of your time not mining. Eventually your miner hardware or solar panels will need maintenance and that will increase your costs.
You'd have to do the math to see how long it'll take you to break even, but something tells me that it won't be nearly as competitive as those server farms using cheap hydroelectricity.
It is very cost effective by those who don't pay for electricity directly. Plenty of older condo and apartment complexes do not meter individual customers. The electricity costs are a component of the condo fees. University housing is an example.
The biggest mining operations are Chinese and Russian farms getting their power through questionably legal arrangements, so those statistics probably don't exist and wouldn't have much relevance if they did.
You can't bribe your way into 30 megawatts of power.
The biggest mining operations have legal partnerships with local and national governments.[1] As well, Russia isn't a major place for bitcoin mining: instead, mining is mostly concentrated in Georgia (the country, not the state) and China.
And indeed, it couldn't possibly. The EMH almost guarantees that hobby mining can't be profitable once the coin is popular enough.