Mining One Bitcoin In South Korea Costs $26,000 While Just $530 In Venezuela


02/17/2018



A lot of money is being expended for mining of bitcoins in South Korea.
 
Recent data released by lighting and furniture firm Elite Fixtures shows that $26,170 is the cost that is incurred in the process of mining just one bitcoin in South Korea. It is the largest market in the world for the digital currency.
 
For the blockchain technology or the distributed ledger technology which is the underlying technology behind bitcoin is kept ticking by the mining of the virtual currency and therefore the so-called bitcoin miners are critical in this chain. A steady stream of ever growing record of transactions and all other data is maintained by a blockchain network which is also essentially a very large decentralized database linked through the internet and computer machines. Transactions in the blockchains are validated by crypto currency miners after they solve complex mathematical problems.
 
And the cheapest country in terms of the costs that are incurred to mine bitcoin is Venezuela according to the Elite Fixtures data. The cost of mining one unit of the priciest virtual currency in the world in Venezuela is $531. The once vibrant economy of this South American nation is now in tatters and this has forced a number of Venezuelans to seek earning in bitcoin mining.
 
And one of the ways that has been devised by Nicolas Maduro – president of Venezuela, to get around the economic sanctions imposed on the country by the U.S. is his reliance on a new cryptocurrency called “petro” which has the support of the oil, gas, gold and diamond reserves of the country.
 
Because of the fact that very large and powerful computers are needed for the cryptocurrency mining process, therefore, these machines use up a lot of electricity and power.  But the earnings for the voluntary miners of cryptocurrency in exchange for the work they do happened when they are rewarded with a specific number of bitcoins in addition to a fee for the transactions done on behalf off those people who use the cryptocurrencies for transactions.
 
In December 17 last year, an all time high of $53 million was earned in revenues by all of the miners of bitcoin all over the world according to Blockchain.info data. That was also the day when bitcoin hits its highest price ever of $19,783.21.
 
Data gathered from governments, utility firms and the International Energy Agency for prices of electricity from 115 different countries formed the basis of the study by Elite Fixtures. The average power consumption by three popular cryptocurrency mining rigs formed the basis for the calculation of the price of power consumption.
 
According to data from Elite Fixtures, the other cheapest countries for mining of bitcoin include Kuwait ($1983), Uzbekistan ($1788), Kazakhstan ($2835), Ukraine ($1852) and Myanmar ($1983).
 
The other costliest countries to mine cryptocurrencies include Niue ($17566)Solomon Island ($16,209), Bahrain ($16,773) and Tonga ($14,671). 
 
(Source:www.cnbc.com)