Bitcoin Mining’s Electricity Bill: Is It Worth It?

They say it takes money to make money; in order to make a profit off Bitcoin mining, you have to buy mining equipment and pay your electricity bill first. As more miners join the Bitcoin network, some individuals fear that the amount of electricity consumed by mining will have a negative impact on the environment. Others believe that the benefits of Bitcoin mining outweigh the cost it takes to produce the digital currency.

Bitcoin mining and energy consumption

New Bitcoin are produced through a process called mining, where computers expend energy and computational resources to solve a difficult math problem that verifies a recent block of Bitcoin transactions. The miner who solves the math problem adds the block to the blockchain and receives newly minted Bitcoin. The difficulty of the math problem depends on how much computational power the network has in summation. As the Bitcoin network attracts more miners, the mining difficulty increases, and usually, the amount of energy a…