A few points - the mining cost you have provided is the cost for some miners. However, some mine far more efficiently, and are in the 10K per coin range. (It also of course depends on how you factor in the cost of rigs). But miners are always gravitating towards cheaper and cheaper (and ultimately free) energy.
As BTC keeps declining in new supply, combined with increased demand, price will rocket up. Its like a double squeeze - less supply, continued demand, growing adoption, and measures in money printed fiat - BTC will rise exponentially over the next 2 halving cycles through to 2032. (At that point, we will easily be over USD 1m per coin).
We know its the "work" required which makes BTC valuable. We also know that any "proof of stake" asset basically has no value long term - we learned that with fiat already.
The cost or value of a mined block of BTC was $425,000 in 2021. It is now less than $300,000.
Let's look at some numbers. The current BTC hashrate is 746.52 EH/s.
https://www.coinwarz.com/mining/bitcoin/hashrate-chartThe most powerful miner currently is the S21e XP Hydro 3U which can hash at 860 TH/s. They can be bought for around $18-20k.
https://www.asicminervalue.com/miners/bitmain/antminer-s21e-xp-hydro-860thThe ratio of 746.52 EH/s to 860 TH/s is approximately 868,046.51. This means it would take about 868,047 of the most powerful ASIC miners (with a hash rate of 860 TH/s) to match the current Bitcoin network hashrate.
51% of 868,046 is approximately 442,703.46.
This means it would take around 442,704 of the most powerful ASIC miners available to potentially achieve a 51% attack on the Bitcoin network, based on the current network hashrate of 746.52 EH/s.
The cost to buy 442,704 ASIC miners at an average price of $20,000 each would be approximately $8.85 billion.Contrast this with Ethereum:
As of January 11, 2025, approximately 27.95% of the total Ethereum (ETH) supply is staked.
To estimate the cost of acquiring 51% of the staked ETH:
1. Determine the total ETH supply: The circulating supply of ETH is approximately 120,488,566 coins.
2. Calculate the total staked ETH:
27.95% of 120,488,566 ETH is staked.
Total staked ETH ≈ 0.2795 × 120,488,566 ≈ 33,676,000 ETH.
3. Calculate 51% of the staked ETH:
51% of 33,676,000 ETH ≈ 0.51 × 33,676,000 ≈ 17,174,760 ETH.
4. Determine the current price of ETH: The price of Ethereum is approximately $3,287.28 per ETH.
5. Estimate the total cost:
Total cost ≈ 17,174,760 ETH × $3,287.28/ETH ≈ $56,462,000,000.Therefore, acquiring 51% of the currently staked ETH would cost approximately $56.46 billion.
Note: This is a simplified estimate. In reality, purchasing such a large amount of ETH would likely drive up the price due to increased demand, resulting in a higher total cost. Additionally, liquidity constraints and market reactions could further impact the feasibility and expense of such an acquisition.Let's say you have the ETH. Now you need to configure all your validators. There are currently around 500,000 validator machines. It is possible to run 50 validators on one machine with 64 GB RAM. But in reality it looks like there's an average of 2 validators per machine. So you would need around 250,000 computers with 64 GB RAM. Network switches and other accessories. That's probably another $1 billion+. You would need many people to configure the validators, get in a waiting list to become a validator.
Attacking Ethereum or Bitcoin would result in loss of funds of course. BTC's value would plummet and in ETH's case the value would plummet and the staker's holdings would be slashed. But it looks to me like it will be more expensive and time consuming to attack Ethereum than Bitcoin.
