There is a significant global contrast in household electricity costs for individual Bitcoin miners (BTC). While mining a Bitcoin in Italy costs USD 208,500, in Lebanon it is about 783 times cheaper, according to a recent study.
Posted on August 17, the report from CoinGecko reveals that only 65 countries are profitable for independent Bitcoin miners, based solely on household energy costs. Among them, 34 countries are in Asia, while there are only five in Europe.
However, independent Bitcoin miners find themselves at odds with the world average for household electricity costs.
“The average cost of household electricity to mine a Bitcoin is USD 46,291.24, which is 35% more than the daily average price of 1 BTC in July 2023 (USD 30,090.08)”, notes the report.
The report identified Italy as the most expensive country for domestic Bitcoin mining, costing $208,560.33 per Bitcoin mined. At the time of publication, this indicates that the cost of mining one Bitcoin in Italy equals the value of approximately 8 bitcoins.
It was followed by Austria, with USD 184,352.44, and Belgium, with USD 172,381.50.
Meanwhile, Lebanon’s domestic electricity rates allow individual miners to generate one Bitcoin for just $266.02. According to this data, this is approximately 783 times cheaper than the cost of mining a Bitcoin in Italy, which is priced at USD 208,560.33.
Iran followed, with a production cost of $532.04 per Bitcoin. However, despite Iran legalizing Bitcoin mining in 2019, the country has since banned legal operations on several occasions, citing stress on power grids over the winter.
On Jan. 4, Cointelegraph reported that approximately 150,000 cryptocurrency mining equipment was seized by Iran’s Organization for the Collection and Sale of State Property (OCSSOP).
On August 19, Binance CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao posted a screenshot of the data from this report on X (formerly Twitter), asking his 8.6 million followers why people in these countries with cheap electricity they would not mine Bitcoin.
Why wouldn’t they? ♂️ pic.twitter.com/cD1TSgOZzx
— CZ Binance (@cz_binance) August 19, 2023
However, Zhao was skeptical and thinks there could be more factors to think about. Still, he suggested it’s worth exploring further:
“The report probably didn’t take feasibility and other logistical aspects into account. But if the data is true, there definitely seems to be some potential opportunities.”
Zhao thanked an X user for explaining that many of these countries lack sufficient electricity to take full advantage of low electricity costs.
“Most of these countries suffer from electricity shortages and often shut down their large industries in summer or during peak hours,” states the user of X.
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