Question

I have many PCs laying around my home and office.
Some are current models with fast Intel CPUs. Can
I mine Bitcoin to make a little money on the side?

Answer

Other answers focus on the cost of electricity, the number of hashes or teraflops achieved by a computer CPU or the size of the current Bitcoin reward. But, you needn’t dig into any of these details to understand this answer.

You can find the mining software to mine Bitcoin or any other coin on any equipment. Even a phone or wristwatch. But, don’t expect to make money. Mining Bitcoin with an x86 CPU (Core or Pentium equivalent) is never cost effective—not even when Bitcoin was trading at nearly $20,000.  A computer with a fast $1500 graphics card will bring you closer to profitability, but not by much.

The problem isn’t that an Intel or AMD processor is too weak to mine for Bitcoin. It’s just as powerful as it was in the early days of Bitcoin. Rather, the problem is that the mining game is a constantly evolving competition. Miners with the fastest hardware and the cheapest power are chasing a shrinking pool of rewards.

The problem arises from a combination of things:

1. There is a fixed rate of rewards available to all miners—and yet, over the past 2 years, hundreds of thousands of new CPUs have been added to the task. You are competing with all of them.
2. Despite a large drop in the Bitcoin exchange rate (from $19,783.21 on Dec. 17, 2017), we know that it is generally a rising commodity, because both speculation and gradual grassroots adoption outpaces the very gradual increase in supply. The rising value of Bitcoin attracts even more individuals and organizations into the game of mining. They are all fighting for a pie that is shrinking in overall size. Here’s why…
3. The math (a built-in mechanism) halves the size of rewards every 4 years. We are currently between two halving events, the next one will occur in May 2020. This halving forces miners to be even more efficient to eke out any reward.
4. In the past few years, we have seen a race among miners and mining pools to acquire the best hardware for the task. At first, it was any CPU that could crunch away at the math. Then, miners quickly discovered that an nVidia graphics processor was better suited to the task. Then ASICS became popular, and now; specialized, large-scale integrated circuits that were designed specifically for mining.
5. Advanced mining pools have the capacity to instantly switch between mining for Bitcoin, Ethereum classic, Litecoin, Bitcoin Cash and dozens of other coins depending upon conditions that change minute-by-minute. Although you can find software that does the same thing, it is unlikely that you can outsmart the big boys at this game, because they have super-fast internet connections and constant software maintenance.
6. Some areas of the world have a surplus of wind, water or solar energy. In fact, there are regions where electricity is free.* Although regional governments would rather that this surplus be used to power homes and businesses (benefiting the local economy), electricity is fungible! And so, local entrepreneurs often “rent” out their cheap electricity by offering shelf space to miners from around the world. Individuals with free or cheap electricity (and some, with a cold climate to keep equipment cool) split this energy savings with the miner. This further stacks the deck against the guy with a fast PC in New York or Houston.

Of course, with Bitcoin generally rising in value (over the long term), this provides continued incentive to mine. It is the only thing that makes this game worthwhile to the individuals who participate.

So, while it is not impossible to profit by mining on a personal computer, if you don’t have very cheap power, the very latest specialized mining rigs, and the skills to constantly tweak your configuration—then your best bet is to join a reputable mining pool. Take your fraction of the mining rewards and let them take a small cut. Cash out frequently, so that you are not locked into their ability to resist hacking or remain solvent.

Related: Largest US operation mines 0.4% of daily Bitcoin rewards. Listen to the owner describe the effiiency of his ASIC processors and the enormous capacity he is adding. This will not produce more Bitcoin. The total reward rate is fixed and falling every 4 years. His build out will consume a massive amount of electricity, but it will only grab share from other miners—and encourage them to increase consuption just to keep up.

* Several readers have pointed out that they have access to “free power” in their office — or more typically, in a college dormitory. While this may be ‘free’ to the student or employee, it is most certainly not free. In the United States, even the most efficient mining, results in a 20 or 30% return on electric cost—and with the added cost of constant equipment updates. This is not the case for personal computers. They are sorely unprofitable…

So, for example, if you have 20 Intel computers cooking for 24 hours each day, you might receive $115 rewards at the end of a year, along with an electric bill for $3500. Long before this happens, you will have tripped the circuit breaker in your dorm room or received an unpleasant memo from your boss’s boss.

Bitcoin mining farms —

• Professional mining pool (above photo and top row below)
• Amateur mining rigs (bottom row below)

This is what you are up against. Even the amateur mining operations depicted in the bottom row require access to very cheap electricity, the latest processors and the skill to expertly maintain hardware, software and the real-time, mining decision-process.

Philip Raymond co-chairs CRYPSA, hosts the New York Bitcoin Event and is keynote speaker at Cryptocurrency Conferences. He sits on the New Money Systems board of Lifeboat Foundation. Book a presentation or consulting engagement.

These are the elephants in the room:

• Unleashing high-volume and speedy transactions
• Governance and the concentration of mining influence among pools, geography or special interests
• Privacy & Anonymity
• Dwindling mining incentives (and the eventual end of mining). Bitcoin’s design eventually drops financial incentives for transaction validation. What then?

As an Op-Ed pundit, I value original content. But the article, below, on Bitcoin fungibility, and this one on the post-incentive era, are a well-deserved nod to inspired thinking by other writers on issues that loom over the cryptocurrency community.

This article at Coinidol comes from an unlikely source: Jacob Okonya is a graduate student in Uganda. He is highly articulate, has a  keen sense of market economics and the evolution of technology adoption. He is also a quick study and a budding columnist.

What Happens When Bitcoin Mining Rewards Diminish To Zero?

Jacob addresses this last issue with clarity and focus. I urge Wild Ducks to read it. My response, below touches on both issues 3 and 4 in the impromptu list, above.

Sunset mining incentives—and also the absence of supporting fully anonymous transactions—are two serious deficiencies in Bitcoin today.
I am confident that both shortcomings will be successfully addressed and resolved.

Thoughts about Issues #3 and #4: [Disclosure] I sit on the board at CRYPSA and draft whitepapers and position statements.*

Blockchain Building: Dwindling Incentives

Financial incentives for miners can be replaced by non-financial awards, such as recognition, governance, gaming, stakeholder lotteries, and exchange reputation points. I am barely scratching the surface. Others will come up with more creative ideas.

Last year, at the 2015 MIT Bitcoin Expo, Keynote speaker Andreas Antonopoulos expressed confidence that Bitcoin will survive the sunset of miner incentives. He proposed some novel methods of ongoing validation incentives—most notably, a game theory replacement. Of course, another possibility is the use of very small transaction fees to continue financial incentives.

Personally, I doubt that direct financial incentives—in the form of microcash payments— will be needed. Ultimately, I envision an ecosystem in which everyone who uses Bitcoin to buy, sell, gift, trade, or invest will avoid fees while creating fluidity—by sharing the CPU burden. All users will validate at least one Blockchain transaction for every 5 transactions of their own.

Today, that burden is complex by design, because it reflects increasing competition to find a diminishing cache of unmined coins. But without that competition, the CPU overhead will be trivial. In fact, it seems likely that a validation mechanism could be built into every personal wallet and every mobile device app. The potential for massive crowd-sourced scrutiny has the added benefit of making the blockchain more robust: Trusted, speedy, and resistant to attack.

Transaction Privacy & Anonymity

Bitcoin’s lack of rock-solid, forensic-thwarting anonymity is a weak point that must ultimately be addressed. It’s not about helping criminals, it’s about liberty and freedoms. Detectives & forensic labs have classic methods of pursuing criminals. It is not our job to offer interlopers an identity, serial number and traceable event for every transaction.

Anonymity can come in one of three ways. Method #3 is least desirable:

1. Add complex, multi-stage, multi-party mixing to every transaction—including random time delays, and parsing out fragments for real purchases and payments. To be successful, mixing must be ubiquitous. That is, it must be active with every wallet and every transaction by default. Ideally, it should even be applied to idle funds. This thwarts both forensic analysis and earnest but misguided attempts to create a registry of ‘tainted’ coins.
2. Fork by consensus: Add anonymizing technology by copying a vetted, open source alt-coin
3. Migrate to a new coin with robust, anonymizing tech at its core. To be effective, it must respect all BTC stakeholders with no other ownership, pre-mined or withheld distribution. Of course, it must be open, transparent and permissionless—with an opportunity and incentive for all users to be miners, or more specifically, to be bookkeepers.

That’s my opinion on the sunset of mining incentives and on transaction anonymity.
—What’s yours?

_{* Philip Raymond is co-chair of the Cryptocurrency Standards}
  ^{Association. He was host and MC for the Bitcoin Event in New York.}