Is Bitcoin Mining Profitable in 2018?

Is Bitcoin Mining Profitable in 2018?“

The short answer would be “It depends on how much you’re willing to spend”. Each person asking himself this will get a slightly different answer since Bitcoin Mining profitability depends on many different factors. In order to find out Bitcoin mining profitability for different factors “mining profitability calculators” were invented.

These calculators take into account the different parameters such as electricity cost, the cost of your hardware and other variables and give you an estimate of your projected profit. Before I give you a short example of how this is calculated let’s make sure you are familiar with the different variables:

Bitcoin Mining terms you should get to know

Hash Rate – A Hash is the mathematical problem the miner’s computer needs to solve. The Hash Rate is the rate at which these problems are being solved. The more miners that join the Bitcoin network, the higher the network Hash Rate is.

The Hash Rate can also refer to your miner’s performance. Today Bitcoin miners (those super powerful computers talked about in the video) come with different Hash Rates. Miners’ performance is measured in MH/s (Mega hash per second), GH/s (Giga hash per second), TH/s (Terra hash per second) and even PH/s (Peta hash per second).

Bitcoins per Block – Each time a mathematical problem is solved, a constant amount of Bitcoins are created. The number of Bitcoins generated per block starts at 50 and is halved every 210,000 blocks (about four years). The current number of Bitcoins awarded per block is 12.5. The last block halving occurred on July 2016 and the next one will be in 2020.

Bitcoin Difficulty – Since the Bitcoin network is designed to produce a constant amount of Bitcoins every 10 minutes, the difficulty of solving the mathematical problems has to increase in order to adjust to the network’s Hash Rate increase. Basically this means that the more miners that join, the harder it gets to actually mine Bitcoins.

Electricity Rate – Operating a Bitcoin miner consumes a lot of electricity. You’ll need to find out your electricity rate in order to calculate profitability. This can usually be found on your monthly electricity bill.

Power consumption – Each miner consumes a different amount of energy. Make sure to find out the exact power consumption of your miner before calculating profitability. This can be found easily with a quick search on the Internet or through this list. Power consumption is measured in Watts.

Pool fees – In order to mine you’ll need to join a mining pool. A mining pool is a group of miners that join together in order to mine more effectively. The platform that brings them together is called a mining pool and it deducts some sort of a fee in order to maintain its operations. Once the pool manages to mine Bitcoins the profits are divided between the pool members depending on how much work each miner has done (i.e. their miner’s hash rate).

Time Frame – When calculating if Bitcoin mining is profitable you’ll have to define a time frame to relate to. Since the more time you mine, the more Bitcoins you’ll earn.

Profitability decline per year – This is probably the most important and elusive variable of them all. The idea is that since no one can actually predict the rate of miners joining the network no one can also predict how difficult it will be to mine in 6 weeks, 6 months or 6 years from now. This is one of the two reasons no one will ever be able to answer you once and for all “is Bitcoin mining profitable ?”. The second reason is the conversion rate. In the case below, you can insert an annual profitability decline factor that will help you estimate the growing difficulty.

Conversion rate – Since no one knows what the BTC/USD exchange rate will be in the future it’s hard to predict if Bitcoin mining will be profitable. If you’re into mining in order to accumulate Bitcoins only then this doesn’t need to bother you. But if you are planning to convert these Bitcoins in the future to any other currency this factor will have a major impact of course.

Get a mining calculator

In order to calculate all of these parameters and get an answer to our question we will use a mining profitability calculator.  here’s a simple mining calculator from 99Bitcoins:

    <tr>
        <td>Hardware Cost (USD)</td>
        <td><input type="text" name="t99mc-btc[hardware-cost]" value="" placeholder="leave empty if not sure"></td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
        <td>Power (Watts)</td>
        <td><input type="text" name="t99mc-btc[hardware-power]" value="" placeholder="leave empty if not sure"></td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
        <td>Power Cost (USD/kWh)</td>
        <td><input type="text" name="t99mc-btc[power-cost]" value="" placeholder="leave empty if not sure"></td>
    </tr>
        </tbody></table>

<table class="t99mc-btc-result" style="display: none">
    <thead>
        <tr>
            <th>Duration</th>
            <th>Calculation</th>
            <th class="t99mc-btc-profit">Estimated Profit in USD</th>
        </tr>
    </thead>
    <tbody data-t99mc-btc="result">
        <tr data-t99mc-btc="result-prototype" style="display: none">
            <td class="t99mc-btc-duration"></td>
            <td class="t99mc-btc-calculation">
                <a data-t99mc-btc="details-button-show">Show Details</a>
                <div data-t99mc-btc="details-block" style="display: none;">
                    <a data-t99mc-btc="details-button-hide">Hide Details</a>
                    <div data-t99mc-btc="echo-pure">Pure Earning in BTC: <span></span></div>
                    <div data-t99mc-btc="echo-fee">Pool Fee in BTC: <span></span></div>
                    <div data-t99mc-btc="echo-after-fee">Earning After Fee in BTC: <span></span></div>
                    <div data-t99mc-btc="echo-usd">Earning in USD: <span></span></div>
                    <div data-t99mc-btc="echo-power">Power Cost in USD: <span></span></div>
                    <div data-t99mc-btc="echo-after-power">Earning After Power Cost in USD: <span></span></div>
                    <div data-t99mc-btc="echo-after-hardware">Earning After Hardware Cost in USD: <span></span></div>
                </div>
            </td>
            <td class="t99mc-btc-profit"></td>
        </tr>
    </tbody>
</table>

However, now let’s take a look at a more complex example where we include more factors:

Today one of the most advanced miners out there is the Antminer S9. It’s what is known as an ASIC mining rig.  It has a mining rate of 14 TH/s. If we use the simple Bitcoin mining calculator (shown above) you will see that at today’s difficulty you will earn around 0.03600399 Bitcoins a month.

But of course this doesn’t take into account the hardware cost, electricity cost, pool fees, etc. Let’s try to calculate all of these together.

<img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-40936" src="" alt="mining profits" width="716" height="236" srcset=" 716w, 300w, 600w, 200w" sizes="(max-width: 716px) 100vw, 716px" />

This data was taken from an advanced Bitcoin mining calculator using the following stats: 2% mining pool fees, 12.5 Bitcoins as a block reward, 14 TH/s hash rate, 1375W power consumption and $0.12 per KW. Date of calculation – February 2018

So after 12 months we should be making around $2,160. However we haven’t deducted the hardware cost yet, so it’s more like we’re breaking even or even losing some money. This is true for Bitcoin’s current exchange rate (around $8,500).

This result can change depending on your own electricity cost, the change in mining difficulty and most importantly the change in the price of Bitcoin.

So you’re probably not going to get rich by mining Bitcoins at home unless you buy some heavy duty equipment and have very low electricity costs. Here’s a list of the most efficient Bitcoin mining hardware out there today. There’s not a lot of variety to pick from since home mining is a dying art.

From Bitcoin Mining - What is it and is it Profitable in 2018? A Beginner's Guide