Quote from: colinistheman on April 28, 2015, 06:41:48 PM

P.S. This is a honest and serious question and not intended to spread FUD or anything. I just am trying to wrap my wits around this concept and understand if it's workable.
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Is bitcoin price sustainable with mining & electricity costs continually leaving the Bitcoin ecosystem?

I am a firm believer that some day a single bitcoin will be worth over $10,000.

But I can't wrap my wits around the math when it comes to the cost of electricity required to sustain a larger and larger market cap. I say this because the total cost of mining typically grows until it is close to the value of the coins being mined (because it is profitable to do so until they balance out. This is a form of arbitrage).

Some math:

At today's prices of roughly $230 USD per bitcoin, 3600 bitcoins per day are valued at about $828,000 USD. That means it is roughly that much mining/electricity cost per day to mine bitcoins and to secure the network.

To sustain a $230 USD price of bitcoin it will cost $302 Million per year in electricity & mining costs.

To sustain a $1000 USD price of bitcoin it will cost $1.3 Billion per year in electricity & mining costs.

To sustain a $10,000 USD price of bitcoin it will cost $13.1 Billion per year in electricity & mining costs.

The thing that has me concerned is all that money is continually leaving the bitcoin ecosystem!

How can this work with that much money leaving the system constantly?

update: Someone pointed me to this PDF file which seems to ask a similar question: http://www.academia.edu/7666373/An_Order-of-Magnitude_Estimate_of_the_Relative_Sustainability_of_the_Bitcoin_Network_-_3rd_Edition

From where Do you know ? ithink its all about bitcoin miner

mika76

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