In the crypto industry, everything changes extremely fast: exchange rates, mining difficulty, new algorithms. In order to simplify our calculations, we presume that cryptocurrency exchange rates don’t change and mining of Bitcoin and Ethereum will never stop. Ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin wants to switch from PoW to PoS and when it happens it will be impossible to mine Ethereum on GPUs and transactions will be validated by node staking. Developers have been willing to change the algorithm for several years but still haven’t done it.
Here are three ways to earn one Bitcoin. The first method is the easiest, the other two involve mining and calculations.
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Method One. Regular Job
You can have a regular job, get paid and save money. You can use this money to buy small bits of Bitcoin using Localbitcoins, a Telegram bot or other platforms. For example, today 1 BTC costs around $5,250.
So if you want to make 1 BTC in a year, you have to save around $440 every month. It’s quite a lot.
Accordingly, if you want to make 1 BTC in two years, you have to save around $220 every month. Remember that you must have a wallet to store your BTC. Be smart and buy a hardware wallet – it’s one of the safest ways to store coins.
Method Two. Bitcoin Mining
This is the most “hardcore” method: instead of buying Bitcoin, you can mine it yourself. You don’t necessarily need to know what mining is, but you’d better have an understanding of it. Consider mining as the process of making money out of air and electricity, even though in reality it is a bit more complicated.
In order to mine Bitcoin you need ASIC. It is a device that was specifically designed to mine Bitcoin and can’t do anything else. To date, the best available ASIC is Antminer S17+. According to Bitmain website, it costs $1,567 without Power Supply Unit (PSU) + $86 for PSU. Recently Bitmain has announced S19 and S19 Pro, but they are unavailable for sale yet.
The miner gives out 67 Th/s on SHA-256 and consumes almost 2.7 kW. Let’s use WhatToMine calculator. Our favorite 2CryptoCalc supports only algorithms for GPU mining, but soon it will be available for ASICs as well.
According to the calculator, Antminer S17+ brings 0.3866 BTC a year. Don’t forget that Bitcoin network hash rate is constantly growing. Last year it increased three times – it means that competition is growing, while it’s getting harder to make coins using the same hardware. If we presume that next year it will be growing at the same pace, real annual profit from ASIC will hardly exceed 0.25 BTC.
Let’s move on: if one device can mine 0.25 BTC, then in order to make 1 BTC in a year you need four such devices, which corresponds to as much as $6,268 without Power Supply Units. Plus we don’t consider the placement of ASICs (they are too noisy to be kept at home – editor’s note), their power consumption, etc.
If you want to make 1 BTC in a year, then ASIC mining is not for you. It is cheaper and easier to simply buy 1 BTC.
But let’s say you are ready to spend two years – remember that mining difficulty grows three times annually. We get 0.25 BTC in a first year and 0.085 BTC in the second year. In this case, we need to buy three Antminer S17+ devices in order to make 1 BTC in two years. $1,567 x 3 = $4,701, which is the bigger part of our initial capital of $5,250 allocated for buying 1 BTC. Would you be able to find where to put these four guys, set up an Internet connection and pay electricity bills for two years using the remaining sum of $549? Unlikely.
Each device consumes 2.7 kW, which means 47,304 kWh in two years. And we have three devices, so it is 141,912 kWh in total. Considering the electricity cost is $0.04 per kWh, you will spend $5,676 on electricity, so $549 mentioned above won’t save you. The budget already amounts to $10,377.
Do you still remember that you can buy 1 BTC for $5,250 without any fuss? So, in this case, Bitcoin mining is not a good option either.
Maybe you would disagree because you think you can sell your hardware later. Sure, you can do that. But after one or two years of usage, the price in the secondary market will be insignificant. It would be a miracle if you could return 10% of the initial price. We already discussed it when choosing which hardware is better in terms of mining performance – ASIC or GPU.
Method Three. Ethereum Mining
Ethereum cryptocurrency ranks second by capitalization in the world. In order to mine Ethereum you need to use GPUs instead of ASICs. As a rule, miners build a mining rig of eight graphics cards.
“What am I supposed to do with Ethereum?” you might ask. “I want Bitcoin!” Fair enough. But who stops you from mining Ethereum and then exchanging it for Bitcoin on the crypto exchange? You can even mine directly to the crypto exchange. For example, 2Miners ETH mining pool supports this payout method.
We don’t recommend keeping money on exchanges, so you can regularly transfer your Bitcoin on a crypto wallet.
In terms of economy building a new rig right now is not cost-effective, so let’s see how much ready-made solutions cost. A quick search shows that you can buy them at a price of around $700.
For Ethereum AMD is a better option. But if you are a professional miner, you can use Nvidia – it will allow you to mine more profitable coins. For example, now Aeternity brings much more profit than others.
Let’s say, we bought a mining rig with AMD graphics cards for $700, hash rate is 180 Mh/s. Let’s enter these data in 2CryptoCalc.
Note that you can buy AMD graphics cards with at least 8 GB of RAM. GPUs with 4 GB will soon be unable to mine Ether.
The rig will bring 0.014 ETH per day, which means 5.11 ETH per year. Ethereum mining difficulty increased only by 23% in a year. Presuming that it will continue growing likewise, we can make a slight correction. The result is 4.5 ETH per year or 0.11 BTC.
Seems like another failure? In order to earn 1 BTC in a year, you need to buy as many as 9 rigs worth $700 each, which makes $6,300 in total. Not so fast. Unlike ASICs, GPUs can be easily sold. There are more gamers than miners – it’s a fact.
In our experience, you can sell one-year-old graphics cards and return 70% of the initial price. Maybe you will have to disassemble the rig and sell graphics cards separately, but it’s totally worth it. If you decide to sell the whole rig at once, you can expect to return 60% of the initial cost.
Our rig consumes around 0.8 kW. If we buy 9 rigs, we will get 7.2 kW. It’s a lot, but not too much. Today many people have such power at home. Besides, rigs don’t make much noise, especially if you use regular PSUs for computers. And even if you use server PSUs, you can still keep mining rigs at home.
Let’s calculate the annual electricity costs. 63,072 kWh at the price of $0.04 per kWh will cost $2,500. This is how much you will have to pay for electricity.
As a result:
- $6,300 are spent on mining rigs
- $2,500 are spent on electricity
- $4,410 come back after selling rigs
So we have spent $4,390 to make 1 Bitcoin. We have saved $860 by mining cryptocurrency instead of simply buying Bitcoin.
In case you can’t keep rigs at home, you should also consider that you will have to rent a location and include the rental costs in calculations. If your electricity cost is less than $0.04 per kWh, you can actually save money.
Conclusion: How To Make One Bitcoin?
The laziest option is to save money and buy 1 Bitcoin. Ironically, making 1 Bitcoin is less expensive if you mine cryptocurrency on GPUs. In this article we calculated values for Ethereum mining. A beginning miner may find it weird, but that’s what many miners on the 2Miners pool do.
By the way, the scaling tactic is especially popular. First, you buy one or two rigs and once you begin to make money and understand the industry better, you can buy more graphics cards and start scaling. This way you can minimize risks and achieve your goal faster.
If you want to learn more about mining, make sure to check out other posts in our blog and if you have any questions you are welcome to ask them in the 2Miners pool chat. See you there!
