Mining Madness: The staggering energy cost of a single Bitcoin in 2025

As Bitcoin prices retreat from their recent highs, the economics of mining are coming under renewed scrutiny. While the global hashrate remains near record levels, the energy required to sustain the network continues to surge, raising uncomfortable questions about efficiency, profitability, and environmental cost.

With block rewards permanently reduced after the 2024 halving and electricity now the single largest operating expense, miners are burning through power at a scale comparable to mid-sized nations just to stay competitive. At today’s prices, the industry is increasingly forced to confront a blunt reality: whether securing the Bitcoin network still justifies the energy it consumes. With this in mind, the team at BestBrokers decided to put into perspective the enormous amounts of electrical power used for mining Bitcoin globally.

Bitcoin’s daily issuance of around 450 coins comes with an immense energy cost. Keeping the network running at its current pace requires roughly 417 gigawatt-hours of electricity every single day, adding up to more than 152 terawatt-hours over the course of a year. That level of consumption rivals – and in most cases exceeds – the annual power use of the vast majority of countries worldwide. Put simply, securing the Bitcoin network now requires electricity on a national scale.

Key findings from the report:

Detailed breakdown of mining costs in the U.S. in 2024

We pulled historical Blockchain hashrate data from Blockchain.com and combined it with the most recent data on the geographic distribution of the Bitcoin network’s computing power from the Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index and Chain Bulletin. This, together with the average efficiency of the current Bitcoin mining hardware, allowed us to calculate the total amount of electric energy used to mine Bitcoin in the U.S. in 2025 and what that would have cost if the electricity were purchased from the grid suppliers at the average business rate (data from EIA).

Here is a detailed breakdown of the daily cost of mining Bitcoin in the U.S. over the past year:

Daily Cost of Bitcoin Mining in the U.S. in 2025

Cost of energy for mining operations based on daily consumption and average monthly electricity price (commercial)

Sources: Blockchain.com, ChainBulletin, EIA

Over the past year, Bitcoin mining operations have consumed steadily increasing amounts of electricity. At the same time, rising power prices for commercial users have pushed operating costs higher, with daily electricity expenses reaching approximately $23 million in November. Even under conservative assumptions, if U.S.-based mining facilities sourced all of their electricity directly from grid operators, they would still face daily power costs of at least $20 million.

The chart below clearly shows the declining profitability of Bitcoin mining in the U.S. We compared the daily costs of energy to mine 1 Bitcoin with the price of the cryptocurrency, which plummeted to roughly $87,000 in November. At the same time, the cost to mine just 1 Bitcoin surged to over $130,000.

Profitability Timeline: Cost of Mining 1 BTC in the U.S. vs. Bitcoin Price

Sources: Blockchain.com, ChainBulletin, EIA

Putting this into perspective

Bitcoin mining in the United States consumes approximately 158.20 GWh of electricity per day, which corresponds to about 1.31% of total daily U.S. electricity demand. While this share may appear modest in percentage terms, it represents a very large absolute volume of energy, particularly given that the United States is already one of the world’s most energy-intensive and highly industrialized economies.

When annualized, this daily consumption amounts to roughly 57,744 GWh per year, an energy footprint substantial enough to power entire sectors or serve as a meaningful point of comparison with other large-scale electricity uses, such as transportation electrification or residential demand.

Charging Every EV on American Roads 126 Times

According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), there were approximately 6.3 million electric vehicles (EVs) in the United States at the beginning of 2025. Based on EV Database estimates, the average EV battery capacity is 72.4 kWh. Multiplying these figures implies that a single full charge of the entire U.S. EV fleet would require about 456.12 GWh of electricity.

6,300,000 × 72.4 = 456,120,000 kWh = 456.12 GWh

Dividing the total annual electricity consumption of Bitcoin mining in the United States by this figure indicates that the same amount of energy could fully charge every electric vehicle in the country approximately 126 times over the course of a year.

57,744 ÷ 456.12 = 126.6

Powering U.S. households

According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), the average American household consumes approximately 10,500 kWh of electricity per year. Using the estimated 57,744 GWh of annual electricity consumed by Bitcoin mining in the United States, this amount of energy could supply electricity to roughly:

57,743,990,000 kWh ÷ 10,500 kWh ≈ 5.5 million households

Based on the latest U.S. Census estimate of 132.6 million households, this implies that the electricity used for Bitcoin mining in the U.S. is equivalent to the annual power consumption of approximately 4.15% of all U.S. households.

Charging iPhones daily for a year

The iPhone 17 has a battery capacity of 3,692 mAh. At a nominal voltage of 3.7 V, this corresponds to approximately 14.351 Wh per full charge. Charging one device once per day for an entire year therefore requires about 5.24 kWh. Dividing total annual Bitcoin mining electricity consumption by this figure yields:

57,743,990,000 kWh ÷ 5.24 kWh ≈ 11.02 billion

In other words, the electricity consumed by U.S. Bitcoin mining in a year could fully charge over 11 billion iPhones every day for an entire year.

Powering Google’s global operations

According to Google’s 2025 Environmental Report, the company’s global electricity consumption totaled 32,727.8 GWh in 2024. Comparing this to annual Bitcoin mining electricity use in the U.S. shows that:

57,744 GWh ÷ 32,727.8 GWh ≈ 1.76

This means that the electricity consumed by Bitcoin mining in the United States could power Google’s entire global infrastructure for 1 year and 9 months.

The Global Picture

At the global level, the United States accounts for approximately 38% of the total electricity consumption associated with Bitcoin mining, making it the largest user worldwide. China follows in second place, representing around 21.2% of global electricity use for Bitcoin mining, despite the presence of regulatory restrictions that limit mining activity within the country.

Daily Energy Needs for BTC Mining by Country

Total Daily Energy Consumption for Mining Bitcoin: 417.18 GWh

Sources: Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index, ChainBulletin

Kazakhstan ranks third, contributing roughly 13.2% of the global Bitcoin hashrate and mining-related power use. In relative terms, the electric consumption of mining operations (20.18 TWh) represents a significant share of the country’s electricity demand. It accounts for a staggering 16.8% of total national energy consumption, which distinguishes Kazakhstan from other major mining jurisdictions.

Methodology

We took the most recent data on geographic distribution of the Bitcoin network’s computing power from the Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index and ChainBulletin and we extrapolated the current Bitcoin hashrate by Country based on the total network hashrate and the relative shares of the different countries.

Bitcoin mining hashrate is given in hashes per second (H/s) or multiples of that, as modern hardware is able to perform trillions of SHA-256 hashing operations per second or Terahashes per second (TH/s). These cryptographic operations are done using specialized mining hardware called an ASIC miner and are what keep the entire Bitcoin network operational.

The efficiency of the ASIC miners is calculated in Joules per TH. It represents the amount of electrical energy in Joules to perform 1 trillion hashes.

1 Joule per second = 1 Watt = 0.001 Kilowatt.

To calculate exactly how much power is used to mine one Bitcoin, we took the 5 best (new and economically-effective) miners and calculated their average hashrate at 243 TH/s and average efficiency at 16.2 J/TH:

Average Efficiency of top 5 miners [J/TH], rough estimate, industry specs

The way the Bitcoin blockchain works is that the network automatically adjusts its difficulty based on the total network hashrate, so that a new block is mined every 10 minutes. Thus, there are 6 blocks mined per hour or 144 blocks mined every 24 hours. With the current block reward at 3.125 BTC, this means 450 Bitcoins are mined globally on a daily basis.

When we know the total blockchain hashrate at the time of compiling this report is 1.07 ZH/s (zettahashes per second, 1 ZH/s = 1,000 EH/s or 1,000,000,000 TH/s), we can calculate that at 16.2J/TH of average efficiency, there are 1,072,987,083 x 16.2 = 17,382,390,744.6 Joules of electrical energy spent every second. This equals 17.38 million kWh of electricity spent every hour. When we multiply this by 24 and convert this massive number into gigawatt-hours, we get 417.18 GWh spent daily on Bitcoin production. If we divide this by the 450 Bitcoins that are mined every day, we get an average of

927,060.84 kWh of electrical power to mine 1 Bitcoin.

Bitcoin Mining by Country December 2025

Source: EIA