Does mining bitcoin on a laptop have an expected revenue exceeding the cost of electricity and wear and tear on the computer? My understanding, from a relatively old source, that it used to be that hobbyists would get bitcoins from mining on their private computers, but that more recently there was a heavy shift to e.g. Iceland where geothermal electricity is cheaper.
What is the expected value of mining bitcoin with spare computrons from laptop including an NVidia Geforce GTX, in the USA near Chicago as far as utilities go? If the expected value is (say) 105% of electricity burning up, what are the chances of breaking even? Does it have (say) a 10% chance of doubling an investment, or are we talking a financial lottery ticket where one minute's mining could theoretically return thousands of dollars worth of BTC, but the expected amount of crunching to get the winning lottery ticket is impractically long?
I've seen some discussion suggesting that Bitcoin is even more volatile than traditional currency, and I'd be a bit surprised at being told, &quot;It's entirely worth it; go ahead.&quot; However, I wanted to ask, and confirm my expected answer about whether mining bitcoin is profitable in a reasonable amount of time.
Thanks,
No.
The cost of electricity will far exceed the value of the bitcoin you generate. People who are using specialised ASICs in regions with low electricity cost barely break even. Your laptop wil do far, far worse than that.