Electricity Costs Shot Up for Bitcoin Miners in January

Several public bitcoin mining companies have reported much higher electricity costs per each bitcoin they mined in January due to the rising competition and elevated power rates.

In a production update on Wednesday, Iris Energy said its electricity cost jumped to $18,705 per BTC in January, which was up 29% from December.

“The increase in electricity costs per bitcoin mined ($18.7k vs. $14.9k in December) was primarily attributable to lower network transaction fees as well as higher electricity prices and reduced market volatility at Childress [Texas] (lower energy trading proceeds),” the firm said in the announcement.

Indeed, bitcoin’s transaction fees in December contributed to 25% of the month’s total block rewards, which increased to over 36.6k BTC. January’s block rewards declined to just over 31k BTC as the transaction fees subsided.