Bitcoin is the currency of the Internet: a distributed, worldwide, decentralized digital money. Unlike traditional currencies such as dollars, bitcoins are issued and managed without any central authority whatsoever: there is no government, company, or bank in charge of Bitcoin. As such, it is more resistant to wild inflation and corrupt banks. With Bitcoin, you can be your own bank.
On August 2021 I spent exactly 1 BTC on 6 Antminer S19j Pros. These were state-of-the art miners that cost $7,500 each, and were hosted with Compass Mining, which sources warehouses with cheap electricity ($0.06 kw/h which gradually increased to $0.08 kw/h).
As of today, these miners are no longer profitable to run. These miners are now worth $500 each (0.05 BTC for 6) which means I lost .95 BTC on the hardware cost.
Electricity for the miners was paid each month with the bitcoin mined. Of the .9 BTC mined between 2021 and today, .7 BTC went to electricity costs. This means in 3 years, the miners only made .2 BTC of profit.
So my initial investment of 1 BTC has resulted in .2 BTC of revenue and .05 BTC worth of hardware. I only have .25 BTC to show for all of this, a loss of 75%.
Please do not make the mistake I did, you are infinitely better off just buying and holding bitcoin than by trying to mine it. The bottom line is bitcoin mining is subsidized by fiat loans, companies can absolutely make a profit in fiat terms by taking out loans to buy miners, but by spending bitcoin on miners directly the depreciation of the hardware will make it so you never, ever make a return in bitcoin.
Right now an Antminer S21 costs 0.09 BTC and will net you 0.001-0.002 BTC a month after electricity costs. With a break even time of 4-7 years at the current hash rate (and hash rate only gets exponentially higher over time), you will never, ever make your bitcoin back.
![r/dataisbeautiful - "Bitcoin" Google Search Trend vs Bitcoin Value [OC]](http://web.archive.org./web/20240516194235im_/https://i.redd.it/2yt4fbzsktwy.png)