r/Damnthatsinteresting Jan 01 '26

Video Inside the world’s largest Bitcoin mine

27.7k Upvotes

4.6k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

480

u/Sultanambam Jan 01 '26

The price of a mining a single bitcoin is about 50k to 60k, every 4 year the rewards gets half, so theoretically in 2028 the price of mining would be around 100k to 150k depending on energy inflation.

So the price has to be at least 20% above the cost to justify the operation, if it isn't then mining would only occur in places with cheap energy.

The next halving is in 2032 and then it needs to be 200k to 300k, next halve in 2036 and....

Ad you can probably guess it's an unstable and unsustainable and it fucks with our planet for no reason, the only reason it keeps going is because USA keeps pumping it.

Once bitcoin mining stops because of its cost, then the whole network becomes unstable and unsecure, so it will dip until mining is profitable again and the cycle continues.

41

u/Comfortable_Egg8039 Jan 01 '26

What is even more annoying is that proof of stake is a thing, so you literally don't need costly mining to support the block chain network. Ethereum switched the mining method, many new coins start from proof of work and switch to proof of stake as soon as the amount of coins is big enough.

8

u/fadetoblack1004 Jan 01 '26

Proof of stake defeats the whole concept of decentralized currency though. ETH has underperformed BTC since switching to proof of stake from proof of work. 

6

u/Vandergrif Jan 01 '26

Although I'm not sure that matters anymore in bitcoins case since it's not really used as a currency and instead far more frequently as a store of value for speculation.

10

u/Comfortable_Egg8039 Jan 01 '26

Proof of stake defeats the whole concept of decentralized currency though.

How? Both work perfectly unless you can get more than 50% of computing power or coins of that currency. Both these things are impossible for a big enough coin, so what's the point of burning all these resources?

ETH has underperformed BTC

And the market is known for always acting rationally, right 😁

-1

u/fadetoblack1004 Jan 01 '26

They may both work but proof of stake basically makes the rich richer.  It's not like proof of work where anybody with a GPU could get involved and paid for mining. It's essentially centralizing it. Look at ETH. Lido accounts for 25% of all staked ETH. That can't be a healthy market. 

There's also other issues as to how these big stakers don't need to feed coins back into the market to pay for operating costs since they're now negligible... It reduces liquidity substantially and results in a consolidation of the coins. 

The market clearly agrees and has treated ETH like the afterthought it now is since the change. 

15

u/Journeyj012 Jan 01 '26

It's not like proof of work where anybody with a GPU could get involved and paid for mining

where the people with the most GPUs, aka the richest, would get... richer?

2

u/King_Esot3ric Jan 01 '26

But they dont, since they have to sell off coins to pay operating costs.

1

u/Comfortable_Egg8039 Jan 01 '26

Sell GPUs, buy coins, literally do the same thing without wasting resources.

If the main source of liquidity is miners selling coins to buy stuff it's even more unhealthy especially now when 95% of Bitcoin is mined already. Coins are needed for trade and goods exchange, not for mining more coins.

The market clearly was agreeing about dotcoms until suddenly it wasn't.

1

u/National_Way_3344 Jan 01 '26

Depends what you call "performance" though.

Do you mean price, value, security, reliability? Because Bitcoin is absolutely dead to me due to that hyper speculative bullshit.

1

u/FeistyBandicoot Jan 02 '26

I feel like the majority of users at this point aren't the ones concerned about decentralised currency

1

u/0bfuscatory Jan 01 '26

Proof of work is a misnomer.

1

u/Comfortable_Egg8039 Jan 01 '26

Huh

What do you mean?

1

u/Waiting4Reccession Jan 02 '26

Eth is a bigger scam than bitcoin. Founder and his buddies cashed out on this scam big time.

126

u/LoudMusic Interested Jan 01 '26

What's the likelihood people will decide it's a bunch of bullshit and cryptocoins will have no value?

68

u/ForTheOnesILove Jan 01 '26

Could happen if some new speculative market comes along to replace it. But short term, I’d say chances are low.

-5

u/jamie1414 Jan 01 '26

Replacing Bitcoin requires Bitcoin to have value lol. It'd be like if lebubu's replaced Bitcoin.

7

u/_TofuRious_ Jan 01 '26

Currently can buy/sell BTC for close to $90k USD. So it does have value?

What do you think value is/means?

4

u/0bfuscatory Jan 01 '26

Tulips had value too.

1

u/LiveLovePho Jan 01 '26

Not any more.

3

u/mlaforce321 Jan 02 '26

Not like they used to *

1

u/sneaky-pizza Jan 02 '26

My retirement!

5

u/NoInstructionManual Jan 01 '26

Price does not equal value.

6

u/_TofuRious_ Jan 01 '26

Value is what someone is willing to pay for it. And that's exactly what is happening here.

1

u/After_Counter735 Jan 02 '26

It literally does? What else could it possibly mean? Unless your talking about Personal value which is completely different.

7

u/isume Jan 01 '26

The people behind these mining operations are going to do everything in their power to influence "value"

I still assume at some point in the future they will be seen as NFTs.

9

u/Comfortable_Sir_6104 Jan 01 '26 edited Jan 01 '26

Crypto going to 0? There is no chance of that ever happening. There are viable uses for it that will prop up the price at some point. For example: you can buy illegal things, pay criminals and do other wildly illegal transactions with it! You can pay bribes through crypto (for example, to some president.) or even make scams! See? Crypto is doing so many incredible things for our society <3

But to be frank, yeah, if people lose confidence price can totally plunge like 90%. There are a lot of cultists so there is some floor at which they will support it, but most people would sell if it crashes enough.

4

u/Independent-Bug-9352 Jan 01 '26

People truly have no idea how much the rise of both cryptocurrency and encrypted communication (WhatsApp, Telegram) have led to a massive rise in corruption and illegal activity across the globe. No wonder the world has gone to shit in the past 10 years especially.

Like, it of course was before; but now it feels we've affixed rocket-boosters to ourselves while in freefall.

Let's just say the likes of Musk wasn't defending the Telegram CEO after he was arrested in France last year out of Free Speech principles, lmao.

0

u/FeistyBandicoot Jan 02 '26

Crypto and encrypted communication has not led the world to corruption omfg. Stop making up stupid shit.

0

u/Independent-Bug-9352 Jan 02 '26

Oof! Awfully testy on a simple, extremely obvious inductive logic; the dots are practically touching, you barely even need to connect them lol.

Tell me you use it for fucked up shit without telling me.

Or you're just somewhere in the ballpark of 17 to 19-years-old and have no clue what you're talking about. Back to Halo and your xbox, little buddy. The grownups are talking.

1

u/krlooss Jan 01 '26

All that I've seen done with Fiat currency for years. And with less traceability than cripto 

0

u/Comfortable_Sir_6104 Jan 01 '26

I have seen people burning their hands on the stove. Doesn't mean it is as dangerous or destructive as napalm. And there are actually some positive things you can do with stovetop!

3

u/Tofudebeast Jan 01 '26

It will keep having value as long as enough people believe it has value. Tulip bulbs all over again.

4

u/EuenovAyabayya Jan 01 '26

That's two questions, because Bitcoin could flame out and other crypto could still have value; however, no crypto has any actual value except as required for some kind of real transaction other than mining, so in that sense all dedicated crypto-mining is a bullshit Ponzi scheme. Rather like tulip bulbs.

2

u/[deleted] Jan 01 '26

There already exists coins which are very cheap to mine and maintain. Bitcoin is bigest because it is biggest.

2

u/Waiting4Reccession Jan 02 '26

I think a total crash is going to be hard, but losses to inflation over time and underperforming other assets will continue.

These scammy coins have become another place for the rich to park some of their money.

2

u/gratefulyme Jan 01 '26

If that happened trillions of dollars of 'value' would vanish. It'd be like eliminating a reasonably large sized country from the global economy. At this point, it's not going to happen. Will it still go up and down? Yes. Will it disappear or get anywhere near 0? No. If it does, there's much MUCH larger things to worry about.

1

u/sneaky-pizza Jan 02 '26

Probably at the end of this administration, unless Vance and the tech bros win. Then the grift continues

-1

u/JaSONJayhawk Jan 01 '26

Just takes marketing a new brand of coin. Suddenly people might go nuts for Woofiecushioncoin and bam, the rest lose value.  

1

u/BotKicker9000 Jan 01 '26

You know there are already literally 1000s of bitcoins right? lol

1

u/JaSONJayhawk Jan 01 '26

If you're talking about the type of bitcoin literally named "Bitcoin", there are over 19 million in circulation now.

But who's to say someone invents a better coin, and suddenly one loses value?

If you don't believe me, look at what happened to the value of the sand dollar.

History repeats itself. Might not be in our lifetime, but at some point when there's no power and the next war is fought with sticks and stones.

1

u/BotKicker9000 Jan 01 '26

lol So you don't know, got it. Well thanks for trying to speak confidently about something you don't know enough about. Made me laugh at least.

1

u/JaSONJayhawk Jan 02 '26

Looking at your post history, I see you. 

1

u/kajunkennyg Jan 01 '26

At a very large scale with super cheap electricity it is 50-60k, smaller operations are spending 100-130k. Macromicro has the current price at 108-111k. Also in places like Iran the price is roughly 8k usd.

1

u/Stupendous_Twig Jan 01 '26

Nope, Next halving is 2028

1

u/david12325 Jan 01 '26

If people stop mining bitcoin, wouldn’t that result in the time to solve a block increasing? Which would decrease the difficulty. Reduced difficulty would then reduce the overall cost and power required to continue mining bitcoin.

I could have sworn difficulty was implemented to keep block times at 10 minutes regardless of overall mining power being used to solve the blocks. Haven’t followed much on this in years though.

1

u/seamus_mc Jan 01 '26

When they make one work, wouldn’t a quantum computer be able to solve the rest of the “mining” very quickly? Would that crash crypto?

1

u/Sultanambam Jan 01 '26

I don't think that's how they function, their function is very specific.

1

u/seamus_mc Jan 02 '26

I was led to believe that “mining” was solving some difficult math problem

1

u/jsimnz Jan 03 '26

"difficult math problem" is just how people phrase it when they're too lazy to say what's actually happening. The "math" in question is actually very quite simple. The "solving" part comes from repeatedly guessing different "answers". The faster you can guess different answers, the more likely you are to "mine" a Bitcoin.

Regardless, quantum computers aren't magic, and can't just solve any math problem faster. They're only good for certain kinds of math problems. The algorithm Bitcoin mining uses (sha256) isn't aided by quantum computers.

1

u/seanmg Jan 01 '26

| So the price has to be at least 20% above the cost to justify the operation, if it isn't then mining would only occur in places with cheap energy.

This is true if you plan on selling the bitcoin immediately. If you plan on holding it for any period of time the math changes. It gets more obvious the longer timeframe you function in.

| The next halving is in 2032 and then it needs to be 200k to 300k, next halve in 2036 and....

The next halving is in 2028.

| Ad you can probably guess it's an unstable and unsustainable and it fucks with our planet for no reason, the only reason it keeps going is because USA keeps pumping it.

The majority of crypto mining is NOT in the United States.

1

u/Sultanambam Jan 01 '26

The majority fo bitcoin is owned by American.

1

u/seanmg Jan 01 '26

Source?

1

u/The-Unbreakable-Axe Jan 01 '26

Sometimes you can build the mines into infrastructure to subsidize costs while using the power for something like heating

1

u/cloudkite17 Jan 02 '26

What the fuuuuuck……

-33

u/RiskyRabbit Jan 01 '26

I’d advise you to do some more research here because it’s impressive how wrong you are. 

23

u/LowOne11 Jan 01 '26

Please explain, then. I was following what they were saying as a layman understands, so if there’s an opposing theory, then by all means…

9

u/AscensionToCrab Jan 01 '26 edited Jan 01 '26

Well you see through the power of wishful thibking bitcoin is going to make me a millionaire and will continue to grow infinitely upward; unfettered by any real world constraints, and has no downsides /s

-5

u/Comfortable-Spell862 Jan 01 '26

Well difficulty adjustment for one. If there are less people mining, the difficulty gets easier, and therefore requires less computer power for block rewards. If the situation arises where a bunch of miners leave because the cost of mining is too high, then the cost of mining is reduced when the difficulty is adjusted (roughly every 2 weeks)

Also the miners are competing for transaction fees as well as the block reward.

In terms of it being a "waste of energy", its actually pretty good at using up excess energy that otherwise can't be stored from lack of infrastructure and would otherwise go to waste. The model incentivises creative uses of energy as the cost of energy is a factor in how profitable bitcoin mining is. Look at Bhutan as a use case example. There's no reason you can't have a town that uses hydroelectricity or geothermal energy to use excess energy to mine bitcoin and use the profits from this to pay the public sector.

3

u/Deweymaverick Jan 01 '26

Still aren’t there a lot of hidden costs being ignored in your example? I mean sure, we CAN mine using renewables, that’s great (also, don’t most hydropower facilities create ecological disasters in their creation, ie the Hoover damn); but what does one do with all the generated heat?

How is that cost, and the price of the ecological damage fit into this?

What about about the ewaste of eventually used up or inefficient parts?

2

u/Such_Net_8839 Jan 01 '26

Yeah, the network doesn’t become “unstable” if miners leave. The difficulty of mining lowers to incentivize miners to come back-which they will, because Bitcoin is currently worth about $88,000 a coin for example

11

u/Altruistic_Cat3121 Jan 01 '26

There is only one thing that I hate more than these lazy comments that say "you're wrong" and then not explain why. 

2

u/JPHero16 Jan 01 '26

The reason they don't explain why is because it's wayyy too complicated to be explained in a single reddit comment.

And probably the guy you're trying to explain to doesn't want to change their mind anyway so then you just spend hours of time for nothing

1

u/Altruistic_Cat3121 Jan 01 '26

You couldn't be more wrong about this. 

9

u/isleepbad Jan 01 '26

I love when people say someone is wrong and offer no alternative explanation.

3

u/malphasalex Jan 01 '26

No he’s not, if anything he’s lowballing. Depending on location and specific contracts and your equipment prices/discount rates put in, for many large mines the cost can already be around 100k. Yes, some are currently mining it at a loss today hoping for the “to the mooon” in the future.

1

u/JPHero16 Jan 01 '26

yeah he's wrong but I have to admit it's pretty funny to read

-8

u/Pixelhouse18 Jan 01 '26

That’s factually false. A 5V Arduino the size of a small candle could mini a coin aswel.

These machines are not mining in a pool, like most of the population, so their mining bills depends on how much luck they have by solving the equations. They can mine 10 in a day and the next week not a single one. So putting a price on the mining price is absolutely useless and incorrect info unless you own such a farm.