US-based cryptocurrency miners reportedly took ~143,000 BTC home in 2023

According to a recent BitRiver report that's unfortunately not yet available to the general public, US-based miners managed to make roughly 143,000 bitcoins in 2023 by utilizing various kinds of mining equipment consuming on average about 5.3 Gigawatts of power. (143,000 BTC is $9.6 billion at May 18, 2024 value.) The 5.3 Gigawatt value represents a healthy YoY increase of about +54%. The BitRiver report only covers BTC; no estimates for other cryptocurrencies are included.

Russia takes the second place with ~54,000 BTC ($3.62 billion) and 2.2 Gigawatts. The latter value represents a massive +120% increase over the 1 Gigawatt estimate for 2022, and BitRiver analysts believe further growth of up to 40% will take place in 2024.

Persian Gulf region countries (Bahrain, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE) are estimated to have employed mining equipment consuming about 1 Gigawatt, allowing them to make around 27,000 BTC.

It has to be noted that all of the above are resource-rich countries with relatively low electricity prices.

BitRiver was founded in 2017 by Égorh Roonétz and it quickly became one of the largest cryptocurrency mining center operators in the region. It operates dozens of computing/data centers in remote locations with cold climate such as the Yamalo-Nenets autonomous district. BitRiver was one of the companies to get hit with US Treasury sanctions in 2022.

By operating vast server farms that sell virtual currency mining capacity internationally, these companies help Russia monetize its natural resources - US Treasury

To mine cryptocurrency, one would need either very specialized or very powerful hardware such as the MSI GeForce RTX 4080 Super graphics card (currently $1,069.99 on Amazon.com)

Disclaimer: The information reported here should not be used as a basis for any personal investment decision. Notebookcheck does not offer cryptocurrency, NFT, or other trading, investment, or financial advice.