<p>The answer is, as Nate explained, that the miner is a sunk cost. Obviously, no sane person would buy a miner if they knew they would be in the situation you described.</p>

<p>The future value of Bitcoins is almost irrelevant to the profitability of mining. You can get the same exposure to the profitability of Bitcoins by buying and holding. (The contrary assumption leads to comically absurd results.)</p>

<p>Sane people buy Bitcoin mining hardware because they expect to do better than they would if they used that same money to buy Bitcoins. Changes in difficulty or the cost of electricity may result in them not making money, but no human endeavor is certain to succeed. </p>

<p>As soon as it costs more to provide electricity to the miner than the value of the coins mined, the miner get shut off and retired.</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-07-15T09:01:25.593Z
2014-07-15T09:01:25.593Z
David Schwartz
<p>Losing 20% a month?
Are you nuts?
I bought a miner from KNC last year, the miner arrived a couple of weeks late, but I counted on that. 
Right now, If I sell my bitcoins as of today's price I would have not only ROI but earned quite a few dollars, not to mention If I would have sold when Bitcoin was at 1000$.
Anyway as of today my miner is mining 0.01BTC/day, that is roughly 30cents per month, which equals to 186$. It is still profitable for me to keep mining even if I deduce the electricity bill.</p>

<p>I am one of those that keep his coin in hope of better times, but if I were another kind of guy I would not only have got my investment back, I would have also earnt some nice bucks.</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-07-15T15:58:27.327Z
2014-07-16T10:00:38.983Z
2014-07-16T10:00:38.983Z
YoMismo
<p>Most miners are speculating that the future value of a bitcoin will be greater than the present value. No profit-oriented miner is happy about the current rate of increase in difficulty. Also, the current rate of difficulty is not a one-way phenomenon. Many factors could cause the difficulty to decrease, such as a flaw that was perceived to be un-fixable. If confidence in bitcoin in general were to drop, mining difficulty would drop as well as mining power and money fled to other virtual currencies. </p>

<p>Other people genuinely want to create an alternate payment network and/or currency and see their contribution in those terms, and not in monetary terms. For those people the price of bitcoins is not their primary motivation.</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-03-26T22:31:25.807Z
your answer is not correct, the only value is the exchange rate BTC/USD at best and what circulation there is, no altruistic value exists.
user14248
CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-03-27T18:20:14.880Z
@user14248 I have seen this viewpoint expressed many times by members of the bitcointalk.org forum. You may not personally share their motivation, but that doesn't make it impossible for other people to see mining as a creative act.
CashConsecution
CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-04-02T16:16:34.490Z
Mining is not a creative act, It is a mechanical act!If it were creative you would not have this difficulty level rising. Also it is not a non profit organization, so therefore Bitcoin is tied to BTC/USD exchange.
user14248
CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-07-12T18:36:06.927Z
That is not completely true. Mining is profitable if done in the right way. That means a miner makes more bitcoin with the investments then simply buying bitcoins.
Mathias711
CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-07-15T09:04:23.977Z
@user14248 Your views are not universal.
David Schwartz
CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-07-15T14:41:28.887Z
It is hard to understand how mining can be profitable given the calculations on this page: http://www.vnbitcoin.org/bitcoincalculator.php which show that even with the latest hardware it is not profitable.
Fraggle
CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-03-26T20:09:29.900Z
2014-03-26T20:09:29.900Z
CashConsecution
<p>Why do people continue to mine bitcoins independently of their hash rate if their ROI loses 20% every month at the going difficulty rate and the exchange rate BTC/USD is at best flat?</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-03-26T19:03:15.510Z
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunk_cost
Nate Eldredge
CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-03-27T11:04:04.520Z
thank you Nate, for the Wikipedia link on sunk costs. very informative.
user14248
CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-04-02T23:13:26.763Z
Be aware that mining Bitcoin only is not the only option to use your SHA256 ASICs. It's usually much more profitable to merge-mine simultaneously several coins that use the same PoW algorithm at the same type, so by mining bitcoin, namecoin and some others simultaneously your loses would drop down or you might even get a small profit.
Joe Pineda
<mining-profitability>
Why do people mine bitcoins when they are losing 20% a month?
user14248
# Why do people mine bitcoins when they are losing 20% a month?

(Asked by: username_0 on 2014-03-26)

Why do people continue to mine bitcoins independently of their hash rate if their ROI loses 20% every month at the going difficulty rate and the exchange rate BTC/USD is at best flat?

**Tags:** mining-profitability

> **Comments:**
> **username_1**: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunk_cost  
> **username_0**: thank you username_1, for the Wikipedia link on sunk costs. very informative.  
> **username_2**: Be aware that mining Bitcoin only is not the only option to use your SHA256 ASICs. It's usually much more profitable to merge-mine simultaneously several coins that use the same PoW algorithm at the same type, so by mining bitcoin, namecoin and some others simultaneously your loses would drop down or you might even get a small profit.  

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## 3 answers

### Answer by username_5 on 2014-03-26. Score: 5 | Accepted answer

Most miners are speculating that the future value of a bitcoin will be greater than the present value. No profit-oriented miner is happy about the current rate of increase in difficulty. Also, the current rate of difficulty is not a one-way phenomenon. Many factors could cause the difficulty to decrease, such as a flaw that was perceived to be un-fixable. If confidence in bitcoin in general were to drop, mining difficulty would drop as well as mining power and money fled to other virtual currencies.

Other people genuinely want to create an alternate payment network and/or currency and see their contribution in those terms, and not in monetary terms. For those people the price of bitcoins is not their primary motivation.

> **Comments:**
> **username_0**: your answer is not correct, the only value is the exchange rate BTC/USD at best and what circulation there is, no altruistic value exists.  
> **username_5**: @username_0 I have seen this viewpoint expressed many times by members of the bitcointalk.org forum. You may not personally share their motivation, but that doesn't make it impossible for other people to see mining as a creative act.  
> **username_0**: Mining is not a creative act, It is a mechanical act!If it were creative you would not have this difficulty level rising. Also it is not a non profit organization, so therefore Bitcoin is tied to BTC/USD exchange.  
> **username_6**: That is not completely true. Mining is profitable if done in the right way. That means a miner makes more bitcoin with the investments then simply buying bitcoins.  
> **username_3**: @username_0 Your views are not universal.  
> **username_7**: It is hard to understand how mining can be profitable given the calculations on this page: http://www.vnbitcoin.org/bitcoincalculator.php which show that even with the latest hardware it is not profitable.  

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### Answer by username_3 on 2014-07-15. Score: 1

The answer is, as username_1 explained, that the miner is a sunk cost. Obviously, no sane person would buy a miner if they knew they would be in the situation you described.

The future value of Bitcoins is almost irrelevant to the profitability of mining. You can get the same exposure to the profitability of Bitcoins by buying and holding. (The contrary assumption leads to comically absurd results.)

Sane people buy Bitcoin mining hardware because they expect to do better than they would if they used that same money to buy Bitcoins. Changes in difficulty or the cost of electricity may result in them not making money, but no human endeavor is certain to succeed.

As soon as it costs more to provide electricity to the miner than the value of the coins mined, the miner get shut off and retired.


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### Answer by username_4 on 2014-07-15. Score: 0

Losing 20% a month?
Are you nuts?
I bought a miner from KNC last year, the miner arrived a couple of weeks late, but I counted on that.
Right now, If I sell my bitcoins as of today's price I would have not only ROI but earned quite a few dollars, not to mention If I would have sold when Bitcoin was at 1000$.
Anyway as of today my miner is mining 0.01BTC/day, that is roughly 30cents per month, which equals to 186$. It is still profitable for me to keep mining even if I deduce the electricity bill.

I am one of those that keep his coin in hope of better times, but if I were another kind of guy I would not only have got my investment back, I would have also earnt some nice bucks.


---

