<p>Miners have about <a href="http://pi.uk.com/bitcoin">26% profit</a> at the moment, that's includes only cost of electricity vs bitcoins sell price.</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2011-09-15T03:19:09.430Z
Once you include the amortized cost of hardware that 26% goes away pretty quick. It's tough to estimate exactly how much that should eat up, though, since there aren't very good sources for MTBF of GPUs running at 100% 24/7.
David Perry
CC BY-SA 3.0
2011-09-15T23:26:11.737Z
whose cost of electricity? that's totally variable....
lemonginger
CC BY-SA 3.0
2011-09-15T01:24:08.273Z
2011-09-15T01:24:08.273Z
Serith
<p><a href="https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/1069/do-bit-coin-miners-actually-make-money/1070#1070">Serith's answer</a> has a good approximation for the operating costs. On <a href="http://pi.uk.com/bitcoin" rel="nofollow noreferrer">that website</a>, you can also see that miners have negative profits if you include hardware/bandwidth costs.<br>
So it is profitable to mine, but it is not profitable to invest in mining hardware right now. Of course that these numbers often change according to several factors - BTC prices, mining difficulty, hardware updates, etc. </p>

<p>As for liquidity, MtGox alone moves around <a href="http://bitcoincharts.com/markets/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">1 million coins</a> each month so that shouldn't be a problem (the total monthly bitcoin production is ~216000 <a href="https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/161/how-many-bitcoins-will-there-eventually-be">until next year</a>).</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2011-09-15T02:02:34.003Z
2011-09-15T02:10:48.117Z
2017-04-13T12:47:34.187Z
nmat
<p>At current valuations ($5.59 as I write this), the profitability of GPU mining is dominated by the cost of physically housing, cooling, and maintaining the GPU mining rigs in a commercial scale datacenter. Electricity and rig capital costs are both less. Electricity and GPU hardware depreciation costs are generally the only costs considered in today's mining profitability calculators.</p>

<p>Our analysis can be found <a href="http://largecoin.com/downloads/gpu-mining-profitability.pdf" rel="nofollow">here</a>.</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2011-09-21T22:15:59.540Z
2011-09-21T22:15:59.540Z
Andrew Jones
<blockquote>
  <p><strong>Possible Duplicate:</strong><br>
  <a href="https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/485/how-can-i-compute-mining-profitability">How can I compute mining profitability?</a>  </p>
</blockquote>



<p>Do bitcoin miners like the one depicted in the video below with 24 server clusters actually profit from bitcoins at the current prices? Are the bit coin exchange rates high enough to cover their costs of electricity and hardware? And is there enough liquidity in the market to actually unload them?</p>

<p>Or are all these miners hoarding them in hopes the idea will take off in the future?</p>

<p><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLt8Se3vVNg&amp;feature=related" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Bitcoin Mining Rig - 24 Machine Setup - 48Gh </a></p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2011-09-15T02:04:36.733Z
[How can I compute mining profitability?](http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/485/how-can-i-compute-mining-profitability) might interest you
nmat
CC BY-SA 3.0
2011-09-15T03:02:11.003Z
vote to close: other questions show exactly how to compute profitability under various scenarios. Other than that it is speculation. Some bitcoin miners are mining at a loss, some for profit, some making a lot of money, some a little, etc.
lemonginger
CC BY-SA 3.0
2012-03-25T14:04:13.797Z
@lemonginger I used to agree, but thinking about it a bit more, I think it's not really a bad question nor a duplicate.
o0'.
<mining-profitability>
Do bitcoin miners actually make money
Element
# Do bitcoin miners actually make money

(Asked by: username_0 on 2011-09-15)

> **Possible Duplicate:**  
> [How can I compute mining profitability?](https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/485/how-can-i-compute-mining-profitability)

Do bitcoin miners like the one depicted in the video below with 24 server clusters actually profit from bitcoins at the current prices? Are the bit coin exchange rates high enough to cover their costs of electricity and hardware? And is there enough liquidity in the market to actually unload them?

Or are all these miners hoarding them in hopes the idea will take off in the future?

[Bitcoin Mining Rig - 24 Machine Setup - 48Gh](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLt8Se3vVNg&feature=related)

**Tags:** mining-profitability

> **Comments:**
> **username_1**: [How can I compute mining profitability?](http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/485/how-can-i-compute-mining-profitability) might interest you  
> **username_2**: vote to close: other questions show exactly how to compute profitability under various scenarios. Other than that it is speculation. Some bitcoin miners are mining at a loss, some for profit, some making a lot of money, some a little, etc.  
> **username_3**: @username_2 I used to agree, but thinking about it a bit more, I think it's not really a bad question nor a duplicate.  

---

## 3 answers

### Answer by username_4 on 2011-09-15. Score: 6

Miners have about [26% profit](http://pi.uk.com/bitcoin) at the moment, that's includes only cost of electricity vs bitcoins sell price.

> **Comments:**
> **username_5**: Once you include the amortized cost of hardware that 26% goes away pretty quick. It's tough to estimate exactly how much that should eat up, though, since there aren't very good sources for MTBF of GPUs running at 100% 24/7.  
> **username_2**: whose cost of electricity? that's totally variable....  

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### Answer by username_1 on 2011-09-15. Score: 3

[username_4's answer](https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/1069/do-bit-coin-miners-actually-make-money/1070#1070) has a good approximation for the operating costs. On [that website](http://pi.uk.com/bitcoin), you can also see that miners have negative profits if you include hardware/bandwidth costs.  
So it is profitable to mine, but it is not profitable to invest in mining hardware right now. Of course that these numbers often change according to several factors - BTC prices, mining difficulty, hardware updates, etc.

As for liquidity, MtGox alone moves around [1 million coins](http://bitcoincharts.com/markets/) each month so that shouldn't be a problem (the total monthly bitcoin production is ~216000 [until next year](https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/161/how-many-bitcoins-will-there-eventually-be)).


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### Answer by username_6 on 2011-09-21. Score: 0

At current valuations ($5.59 as I write this), the profitability of GPU mining is dominated by the cost of physically housing, cooling, and maintaining the GPU mining rigs in a commercial scale datacenter. Electricity and rig capital costs are both less. Electricity and GPU hardware depreciation costs are generally the only costs considered in today's mining profitability calculators.

Our analysis can be found [here](http://largecoin.com/downloads/gpu-mining-profitability.pdf).


---

