Topic: It costs less to mine gold than it does to mine Bitcoin - page 2. (Read 768 times)

Exactly. They only talk about how much energy is used but they don't talk about how it is produced. The energy produced for bitcoin mining us nowhere near as damaging as cutting down forests and destroying nature to make space for huge machines to excavate a dig up all the land leaving a huge landfill and destruction in their wake. It is dangerous as hell to mine and it must be scary too. People die all the time mining it's not even big thing it is to be expected.

Why do many people prefer to mine bitcoin? the answer is because not everyone can mine gold, maybe only people who have large companies and capital can mine gold.

But mining bitcoin is relatively easier, there are no complicated requirements to mine gold, there are no permits or that. We only need computers and VGA, this is very easy.

And another one of the reasons that makes people choose bitcoin is its potential, high volatility in the bitcoin market makes bitcoin go down and rise so fast. So that everyone thinks this bitcoin has a higher up potential.

Ok, if we are going to cherry pick statistics, then why not measure something that money cannot pay for.... "A total of 40 workers were killed in accidents in gold mines last year...." South Africa. - Source : https://city-press.news24.com/Business/gold-sector-still-leads-in-mine-deaths-20190301

People are worried about rubbish like this, but they forget how many lives has been lost in mining for precious metals and these lives cannot be replaced with any amount of money!

The waste water of these mines are killing loads of animals and plants and some people too, but that is nothing... right? So, is the electricity used for Bitcoin mining really that destructive or are they just looking for a stick to bash Bitcoin?   

It’s a flaw argument, you think bitcoin mining never create pollution other than carbon footprint? All the mining equipment used to mine gold, chemicals, tools, the process of devastating the environment to detect gold, blah blah etc. You think bitcoin did any better? All the equipment used to mine bitcoin bitcoin miners, come at the cost of environment destruction, the chemical used to produce the miners, the rare earths used inside the miners, they’re all contribute to earth destruction. Bitcoin is not greener tech than anyone think they’re, of course you can argue we can go back to CPU mining and our operation can be greener by using greener mining process and avoid using mining equipment from the illegal sources, we can also argue there’s greener way to harvest gold too, but people want profit out of everything else, they are willing sacrifice anything to get some profit out of the hard work, and going greener operation will add to more cost to the profit that can be made, yes, going greener is going to cost more money, in these level, I can assume gold mining is more profitable than all the idiots who mining bitcoin with all the resources available to the world, ok some argue gold mining make up more amount of money per day compare to bitcoin, roughly 5-10x more marketcap and thus more pollutions, don’t forget we got thousands of crypto that’s mineable, while we have only less than 300 mineable minerals in the periodic table, you can argue we can mine all the minerals in the world and still produce more pollution, in the end, crypto mining is highly scalable, it’s not limited to bitcoin only, and not limited to periodic table too, you try to combine all the bitcoin eth lite coin monero blah blah mining and compare it to gold again? Then you want to preach proof of stake, yeah, it’s full of flaws, I’m going to sleep now.

thats right! mining gold is not for all. the initial investment is high that not everybody can afford of. aside from that, you should have sufficient knowledge when it comes to gold mining.
bitcoin mining is different. you can mine btc even under your mom's basement or practically everywhere as long as you have the source of energy.

You are not considering the actual cost of gold mining. Here is a bit of information for you:

https://www.survivalinternational.org/news/12158

Gold mining have been devastating the tropical rain-forest and causing irreversible damage. It is causing mercury poisoning to the indigenous people who live in the forest. Many of the indigenous tribes are getting wiped out due to the genocides being perpetrated by gold miners. And this is happening not just in Brazil, but also in other countries such as Venezuela and Peru as well.

But it is also very expensive just to buy gold right?

But the main point here is how are you going to profit? If mining gold cost less then I'm sure your profit will be less as well.

As compare to bitcoin wherein you need a lot of computing power to mine, but in the long run the rewards are very fulfilling as it might give you a better ROI than gold.

The supply of gold is undetermined and that's why its value is still less compare to bitcoin which is only have limited supply. Bitcoin and gold mining are both costly because you have to get advance technology for you to mine, especially on gold which requires a lot of force work while bitcoin can be mine with minimal personnel.

Do you mean mining gold directly from the earth? I think that it may be very expensive when there is no gold resource in your country. Or you don't have any skill or right for mining gold. Mining gold is actually also very difficult and not everybody can do it. But if you mean that buying gold, it may be true.

In some point it may be true. But let us take a look on the supply of gold, is it numerous that it can be easy to mine? It may be cost less than mining bitcoin but it is difficult to find. Gold is just a resemblance of mining in bitcoin. Therefore, it is not right to compare mining in bitcoin and mining a gold literally.

I need to make it clear that nuclear power production is not safe, not safe and not a way to keep our environment cleaner. It might be the cost effective way, and I've seen the effects of nuclear power production impacts over human beings as well over the fishes. The solution I prefer is production of power through solar plants which seems to be the better and the finest way. Carbon emissions from the large scale mining farms will also be very high, a better power source without harming the environment needs to be innovated.

First of all, it is necessary to mention that the opportunities to extract bitcoin are available for every person in the world, but to extract gold, it is difficult not only because of the lack of resources, but also because of the lack of a personal source as such.  For bitcoin you only need equipment and knowledge.

It might cost less energy but it probably costs a lot more for the equipment then bitcoin. You also not guaranteed anything with gold mining. You need to add in all costs to work this out and you need to add in that gold mining does just use the energy it also destroys the environment and can be hazardous to your health and noone has died mining bitcoin but olebty have on mining expeditions.  

Interesting topic btw. I also so many people are interested and have a lot to say. Comments are interesting, to say the least.

And yet people still mine Bitcoin, because it's fairly easy to setup an operation once you have a place with cheap electricity - compared to precious metals, when you have first to find the deposits, then get permits, pay the fees, rent equipment and so on.

Also, this relative inefficiency is a good thing, because it forces miners to improve their energy efficiency, by finding places with excess electricity. Bitcoin mining is a great candidate for making renewable source like wind and solar more economically attractive by using their surplus electricity.

The amount of energy required to "mine" one dollar's worth of Bitcoin is more than twice that required to mine the same value of copper, gold or platinum. One dollar's worth of Bitcoin takes about 17 megajoules of energy to mine.

What makes Cryptocurrency mining this expensive?

1. The exponential growth in mining price is a consequence of rising hash rate, which is a measure of miners' performance.
2. Hash rate adjustments can make Bitcoin mining exponentially more energy intensive.
3. As the hash rate increases the chances of computing the mathematical puzzle required to earn bitcoin also increases but along with it, the amount of energy needed to run a bitcoin mining too surges upward.

Mining is a process equivalent of a government printing new currency and apart from knowing its mining cost; it carries an entire process of releasing new Bitcoins.
 
You can learn more regarding the mining practices from the blog, which was suggested to me once and is very useful:
https://www.altcoinsidekick.com/bitcoin-basic-blog/a-simple-guide-to-understanding-bitcoin?rq=bitcoin%20mining

Time to get one of those Australian metal detectors... you know, the ones that can distinguish between gold and other materials 8 feet into the ground... and start checking out the old gold mines in the world.

Why do this? To get enough gold to buy more Bitcoin, of course.