I was wondering: how costly is crypto mining for me?
I let an easy-to-use mining application run on my desktop computer (RTX 3080 GPU) for 24 hours.
After 24 hours, the miner reported that I had mined 0,00000365 BTC, and that this would earn me €0,39. The electrical power consumption of my desktop computer for that period was 13,024 kWh.
How much does 13 kWh cost me? Here in Belgium, we pay a lot of taxes on our utility bill. So just multiplying 13 kWh with the cost for 1 kWh would not produce realistic costs.
What I did instead: I took my utility bill of December 2024, with all the taxes, and created a spreadsheet that re-calculates all of the costs and taxes. That gives me a spreadsheet were I can simulate changes to my bill and see what the final result is. And with that spreadsheet, I increased my electrical power consumption for December 2024 with 13,024 kWh. That gave me an extra cost of €3,91.
Spending €3,91 to earn €0,39 is not viable at all.
But what if I would run the miner only when my solar panels produce enough power? That’s free electricity, right?
Yes, but … my electricity supplier also pays me money for the solar power I produce and don’t consume (e.g., inject).
Injecting 13,024 kWh would earn me €0,86. So that’s at least double the amount that mining would earn me.
Conclusion: as long as electricity tariffs don’t change significantly, mining is not financially viable for me. One would be better of buying BTC with the small payouts for injected power.
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Didier Stevens 
Does the temperature in your room increase due to the miner running full blast? Would you turn down the heater to compensate (which may change the calculation slightly).
Comment by Anonymous — Saturday 15 February 2025 @ 8:01
Indeed, good point, I did turn down the heating in the room, and the heat of the desktop computer made it a nice 20°C. Maybe I’ll write a bit more about this.
Comment by Didier Stevens — Sunday 2 March 2025 @ 8:39