The math around the bitcoin farm is as subjective as it is objective. WHAT math you use depends entirely on your play style, lifestyle, and simply how much time you spend in game. Now I don't post here often, but I like sharing stuff that can actually have weight over here when I do. Straight up there is some self promo here (my video is at the bottom) but you can get everything you need in the post without watching the video.
I'll throw my spread sheet in here right up top for those that don't care about all the 'discussion' about it. Just make sure after you open the link to go to File > Make a Copy so you can edit it. Requesting access won't do anything for you (except give me your email address 😈) because I'm not going to give anyone access to the base file.
Spread Sheet –
TLDR on the sheet – You can edit the prices of Bitcoin, graphics cards, fuel, and Number of cards in your farm. They are in yellow. You can also edit the price of all the components of each module, though they don't matter that much to the over all math. Each module has it's own little box that spits out a break even time. The last 5 or so minutes of my video is me using the spread sheet if you wanna see a video example.
Now for the discussion side of it.
There are two schools of thought here, and I’ll provide the numbers for both, but let me explain those so everyone is on the same page. The first thought processing being that you need to include all fuel costs in figuring out the bitcoin farm. I don’t agree with this, but some folks are adamant this is how it needs to be looked at. The other is that the fuel cost is shared by the rest of your hideout. Mix in that, the sheer variability of burn rates based on hideout management skills, and the variability in prices of fuel, it’s pointless to try to assess all of the fuel cost against the bitcoin farm. I fall in the later of these, and that's because I use the hideout a lot.
Simple thoughts for this? Bitcoin Farm 1 is for EVERYONE that can get it built. Bitcoin Farm 2 is for folks who play most of the wipe and can collect coins every few days. Bitcoin Farm 3 is for folks who play all wipe and can collect every day. These are broad generalizations, so take them with a grain of salt.
Now in the last few weeks not only has BSG buffed the bitcoin price, Bitcoin IRL has gone on a run for various reasons outside of the scope of this thread. And the in game BTC is tied to IRL bitcoin, though it does have a modifier, and that's what BSG changes to increase/decrease it's value.
I'm going to provide some rough days here, but keep in mind these things change a TON week to week, so double check on my spread sheet or the various free calculators out there before you commit
If you buy everything to build the Level 1 farm and just put one card in it, the farm will pay for itself in 7-9 days depending on the price of cards and bitcoin, then you get a free bitcoin every 40 hours roughly. At 10 cards, the total time for a bitcoin goes down to about 30 hours. This is of course not including fuel costs. If you want to include fuel, you need to get 10 cards in there, then it’ll break even in about 55 days, but that means that you don’t count your fuel cost to anything else you do. None of your bullet crafts, water collector, or any crafts you do for profit. After it pays itself off, it generates about 270k per day with bitcoin at 325k.
On top of this, if you die with a graphics card in your secure container, it’s only worth about 127k to Therapist, so now you have a place to put those and have them work for you throughout the wipe. If that’s all you put into your bitcoin farm, the break even time for 1 card is less than 5 days, and 10 cards is less than 8 days.
The Level 2 farm is really for those who want to play all wipe. If you're one of the players who only plays a few weeks or first few months of a wipe, I’d just stick with the level 1 farm. If you play most of the wipe, and can log in every other day or so to collect your coins, then the level 2 farm is an easy choice. At 25 cards, it only takes a little over a month to break even without fuel costs. With fuel it’s about 57 days. But again, if your playing all wipe, you are deff missing out if your not crafting super waters, bullets, or the half a dozen other easy crafts in the hideout that make money. After it pays for itself, it’ll be making about 390k per day of pure profit.
The level 3 farm is a completely different ball game, and not just because you need solar to build it, which requires the hard to acquire far forward current converter (only on labs or through LK right now). The all in price for for the farm, not even counting solar power, is almost 27 million rubles. And I say that, because if you are going to go all the way to level 3 with the farm, you better fill it up with 50 cards as soon as it’s constructed or you're just losing out on potential rubles.
Now the payoff here is huge. The farm will pay itself off in only 46 days. On top of that, it will generate over 593k rubles per day of pure profit once it pays itself off.
I don't count the solar power cost in this for one main reason, solar pays for itself. The math is funky because of hideout management, but it takes between 8-12 weeks for solar power to pay for itself in just fuel saving costs, and since we don't include fuel costs in our calcs, we won’t include it the level 3 farm.
If you're like me, and you’ve had level 2 for a while, and you mid to late wipe before you can upgrade to level 3, the numbers shake out a little different. Lets assume you’ve had your level two farm up long enough that it’s paid for itself. The break even point now for upgrade to level 3 is only another ~35 days. So even though as of making this video were probably about half way through the wipe, I’m still going to try to get mine built in the next few weeks.
So that's all the math and story. The video is a rehash of all of this and you won't get much more out of watching it other than graphics and seeing me use the spread sheet toward the end.
*This post, I used Bitcoin at 325,000 and Graphics Cards at 475,000
Video –
*Prices in the video were 430k for graphics cards and 285k on bitcoin.
Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/EscapefromTarkov/comments/11xl6d1/bitcoin_farm_worth_it_or_not/
