Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin shared cost estimates on October 17, 2026, showing Bitcoin mining expenses are roughly balanced between computing capital expenditure and electricity. In a post on X, Buterin said the split is about 50/50, with a full breakdown putting total mining costs near $93,700 per Bitcoin.
According to the table, computing capex accounts for about $37,600, or roughly 40% of the total. Electricity supplied directly to mining machines costs about $40,600 per Bitcoin, or 43.3%, while other electricity costs add another $2,400. Combined, electricity represents 45.9% of mining expenses. Labor adds $3,200, facility rent adds $2,500, and other costs including maintenance, insurance, taxes and bandwidth come to about $7,400.
By comparison, Buterin’s AI inference cost table uses dollars per GPU-year, with total costs around $26,260. Computing capital expenditure dominates at 76%, or about $19,900, while electricity is only 4.8% of the total. Labor costs add $1,400, facility rent adds $900, and other operating costs total roughly $2,800.
Buterin noted the two tables cannot be compared directly because they use different units. He also highlighted a key operational difference: miners with flexible power contracts can scale back when hashprice falls, while AI operators have less room because financed hardware keeps costing money whether or not it is fully used.
The comparison arrives as major miners expand into AI and high-performance computing. Core Scientific signed an AI data center deal with AMD. TeraWulf signed a 20-year lease with Anthropic at its Hawesville, Kentucky campus, expected to support about 401 megawatts and an estimated $19 billion in revenue over the initial term, with initial capacity expected in the second half of 2027.
Hyperscale Data sold about 100 Bitcoin and set up a Bitcoin-backed credit facility for construction in Michigan, with its first deployment covering about 20 megawatts under a ten-year agreement. MARA agreed in July to buy a 1,200-acre Texas property for high-performance computing and Bitcoin mining, expecting one gigawatt of grid capacity by October 2027 and two gigawatts by April 2028.
