Poll: How many Bitcoins do you have?

Re:Poll: How many Bitcoins do you have? by VLM on Tuesday April 09, 2013 @11:34AM (#5518806)

Electricity is pretty cheap. The kind of gear required to make the electric bill a significant problem would be a bankrupting level of capital expense. I would estimate it would take a pretty large rack and tens of thousands of dollars to consume several kilowatts at which time hundreds of dollar energy bills would be a rounding error.

Also you need to correct for HVAC.

If its winter a KWh of BTC is the same heat as a KWh equiv of natgas, although the natgas is a little cheaper than electrical, by about a factor of 2. So spend $10 on a absolutely roaring system (About a KW continuously 24x7 which you're not going to be doing on non-dedicated hardware) and save about $4 on my gas bill so the NET is an expense of $6.

In the summer you have to correct for the overall system coefficient of performance, and people who have no idea what a COP is usually assume its "1" (legally mandated by local building code to be a minimum of 10 where I live, your experience may vary). So spend $10 on electricity and add an extra buck or so for HVAC cooling capacity.

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Re:Poll: How many Bitcoins do you have? by IgorPartola on Tuesday April 09, 2013 @11:43AM (#5518885)

What it comes down to is whether you will ever break even with what you put into your rig + all the ongoing expenses for what you get out.

> Electricity is pretty cheap. The kind of gear required to make the electric bill a significant problem would be a bankrupting level of capital expense.

The problem is that often Bitcoins are cheaper.

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