Vitalik Buterin Reveals Bitcoin Mining Costs | 46% Electricity vs AI’s 76% Hardware Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin says Bitcoin mining has an approximately even split between the investment required to run mining computers and the electricity used to operate them. But the numbers in the cost table he shared on October 17, 2026, offer a more detailed picture: $43,000 in electricity per BTC (45.9%), $37,600 in computing capital expenditure (40.1%), and $13,100 in other operating costs, for a total estimate of $93,700 per Bitcoin mined. Buterin also compared Bitcoin mining with AI inference, where compute capital expenditure reaches roughly 76% of the model while electricity accounts for about 4.8%. This report explains both tables, the different measurement units, the importance of pow
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