Report: It's Much Cheaper to Mine Gold Than It Is to Mine BTC

According to a new report, mining for gold is a lot less expensive than mining for bitcoin.

Mining for Gold Is More Economical

Over the past several months, as bitcoin has exploded in price (it’s currently trading for well over $58,000 per unit), several environmentalists and crypto bashers have taken to arguing that the mining process behind cryptocurrency and bitcoin is dangerous for the planet. They’re convinced that the ongoing extraction of new coins is going to leave some serious impacts on the world – impacts that cannot potentially be reversed in the future.

This new report details the situation behind mining both bitcoin and gold, with the latter being far less expensive given that it does not require computers for extraction. Right now, it costs approximately $973 to mine a single ounce of gold. By contrast, mining BTC on a computer costs over $4,000 per unit.

In addition, it is estimated that about two-thirds of the world’s gold supply has already been extracted, whereas there are still well over two million BTC units to be mined before the full supply of the asset is in circulation come 2140. Thus, environmentalists believe that the carbon footprint that will be left behind by bitcoin is far more dangerous.

Several other reports have been issued in recent years claiming that bitcoin mining leaves as big a carbon footprint as the city of Las Vegas, Nevada. We’ve also heard that mining bitcoin requires more energy than the countries of both Iceland and Argentina amongst others.

Another big argument working against further bitcoin extraction has to do with the idea that fiat currencies are not slated to disappear anytime soon. Since the day of its birth, bitcoin – like many of the world’s leading forms of crypto – was designed to potentially shove fiat currencies and credit cards aside. BTC was designed as a payment currency that people could utilize to garner goods and services.

However, this hasn’t come to be given that the asset is amongst the most volatile available today. While the currency has made some headway in recent months – it is now accepted by merchants such as PayPal and Tesla – it’s still got a long way to go before this dream is realized.

Cash Isn’t Going Anywhere

Analysts at Deutsche Bank now say that the notion of BTC ever replacing cash isn’t going to happen – at least not in the immediate future. They say:

We believe that cash will not likely disappear soon. In fact, the amount of cash in circulation has been surging and, more recently, the COVID-19 pandemic has caused the demand for cash to skyrocket… Among consumers, cash remains king. People regard cash as a ‘store of value.’ According to our proprietary survey of 3,600 individuals across the UK, US, China, Germany, France and Italy, one-third of Americans and Europeans rank cash as their favorite payment method.

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