It’s no longer profitable to mine bitcoin, by some estimates It’s no longer profitable to mine bitcoin, by some estimates
3 Hours Ago | 00:49
Bitcoin has dropped to a point where it's not that profitable to produce, according to some estimates.
"Bitcoin currently trades essentially at the break-even cost of mining a bitcoin, currently at $8,038 based on a mining model developed by our data science team," Fundstrat's Thomas Lee said in a report Thursday.
Fundstrat's model incorporates three factors: the cost of equipment, electricity and other overhead such as maintaining cooling facilities.
The cryptocurrency traded mildly lower, near $8,000, Thursday, according to CoinDesk's bitcoin price index, which tracks prices from four major global exchanges. Earlier, bitcoin hit a low of $7,676.52, its lowest since Feb. 8, according to CoinDesk data.
Bitcoin is created through an energy-intensive "mining" process that uses high computing power to solve a complex mathematical equation, proving an anonymous miner used the process the network agreed upon to build the blockchain record of transactions. Miners then get bitcoin in reward for successfully completing the equation.