<p>AWS is rental of server instances.  Servers without GPUs. Bitcoin is not cost effective when mining using CPUs, so nobody has done that analysis for nearly two years because its an obvious money loser and becomes a worse option with each passing day of rising difficulty.</p>

<p>Now EC2 (compute cluster) does use GPUs but NVidia GPUs which don't perform at a fraction of the level of AMD GPUs for the specific purpose of Bitcoin mining. Although it was not analyzed recently, a <a href="https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/a/1064/153">calculation from a while</a> ago provides numbers in the right ballpark, if not better than they would be today.  In that study costs you more than twenty dollars of EC2 charges to earn one dollar of bitcoins.</p>

<p>Once ASICs ship that difference will increase possibly by an order of magnitude.</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2013-04-04T15:11:09.863Z
http://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2010/11/15/announcing-cluster-gpu-instances-for-amazon-ec2/
Roy
CC BY-SA 3.0
2012-10-28T15:35:36.847Z
2012-10-28T15:35:36.847Z
2017-04-13T12:47:33.283Z
Stephen Gornick
<p><a href="http://blog.brycekerley.net/post/5338746136/bitcoin-mining-on-amazon-ec2" rel="noreferrer">http://blog.brycekerley.net/post/5338746136/bitcoin-mining-on-amazon-ec2</a></p>

<p>Here its explained at best, that it is NOT profitable even on the GPU servers ;)</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2013-04-14T08:35:09.340Z
That post is pretty old though. Exchange rates were different then.
DuckMaestro
CC BY-SA 3.0
2013-02-08T16:16:52.943Z
2013-02-08T16:16:52.943Z
armand
<p>Read title.</p>

<p>Creating a soft of self sustainability if you will. It might not be possible?</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2013-02-08T18:49:35.370Z
Short nitpick: obviously not. If it did, everyone would do that, and the prices and difficulty would auto-adjust accordingly.
o0'.
CC BY-SA 3.0
2013-02-09T00:24:18.213Z
Surely the compute costs would rule it out anyhow?
Lloyd
CC BY-SA 3.0
2012-10-28T18:20:17.883Z
Short answer: not by a long shot.
ThePiachu
CC BY-SA 3.0
2012-10-28T18:21:06.663Z
Also related - http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/1063/could-the-ec2-infrastructure-be-used-to-efficiently-launch-a-51-attack
ThePiachu
<mining-profitability><cpu-mining><amazon-web-services>
Can you mine more bitcoins on amazon aws than it would cost to operate the servers?
James
# Can you mine more bitcoins on amazon aws than it would cost to operate the servers?

(Asked by: username_0 on 2012-10-28)

Read title.

Creating a soft of self sustainability if you will. It might not be possible?

**Tags:** mining-profitability, cpu-mining, amazon-web-services

> **Comments:**
> **username_3**: Short answer: not by a long shot.  
> **username_3**: Also related - http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/1063/could-the-ec2-infrastructure-be-used-to-efficiently-launch-a-51-attack  
> **username_1**: Short nitpick: obviously not. If it did, everyone would do that, and the prices and difficulty would auto-adjust accordingly.  
> **username_2**: Surely the compute costs would rule it out anyhow?  

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## 2 answers

### Answer by username_4 on 2012-10-28. Score: 14

AWS is rental of server instances. Servers without GPUs. Bitcoin is not cost effective when mining using CPUs, so nobody has done that analysis for nearly two years because its an obvious money loser and becomes a worse option with each passing day of rising difficulty.

Now EC2 (compute cluster) does use GPUs but NVidia GPUs which don't perform at a fraction of the level of AMD GPUs for the specific purpose of Bitcoin mining. Although it was not analyzed recently, a [calculation from a while](https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/a/1064/153) ago provides numbers in the right ballpark, if not better than they would be today. In that study costs you more than twenty dollars of EC2 charges to earn one dollar of bitcoins.

Once ASICs ship that difference will increase possibly by an order of magnitude.

> **Comments:**
> **username_5**: http://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2010/11/15/announcing-cluster-gpu-instances-for-amazon-ec2/  

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### Answer by username_6 on 2013-02-08. Score: 6

<http://blog.brycekerley.net/post/5338746136/bitcoin-mining-on-amazon-ec2>

Here its explained at best, that it is NOT profitable even on the GPU servers ;)

> **Comments:**
> **username_7**: That post is pretty old though. Exchange rates were different then.  

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