Bitcoin Farming, Basic Arithmetic, and you

I have written this guide to dispel a common misconception I hear from this community – that putting more than one Graphics Card in your Bitcoin Farm is a great idea.

TLDR: The FIRST graphics card you put in your bitcoin farm generates a bitcoin every 20 hours. Every additional graphics card you put in your bitcoin farm generates a bitcoin every 333.33 hours. This information is misstated on the wiki and in many videos I've seen.

A pretty simple formula is utilized to determine Bitcoin Farming output. The payback period for your first graphics card is around 3 days. For each additional graphics card that you put in the payback period is over 20 days. The reason that this has confused so many people is that they credit the production from Graphics Card 1 to the payback period for the rest of the Graphics Cards.

Caveat 1: Escape from Tarkov is a video game and, at least for us players, not a business. Many video game players are completionists, and I will not begrudge anyone who wants to max out every single part of their hideout because it will feel like an achievement. This guide discusses the impact of bitcoin farming on your PMC's wallet. If you find utility in maxing out the bitcoin farm for the feeling of completion then you should do it and probably just close this guide and not worry about it.

Caveat 2: This guide will not address people who hatchet run or pistol run to put graphics cards in their secure container that will usually end up being non-FIR. There are too many variables (spawn rate, survival rate, replacement value of just doing normal Tarkov raids instead of hatchet runs) to do a decent analysis. If you end up with non-FIR graphics cards you should put them in your Bitcoin Farm.

Analysis:

The formula for bitcoin generation is as follows:

• BTC Generated per Hour = 0.05 + (Graphics Cards – 1) / 49 * 0.15

Let's simplify some unnecessary constants and make this look more like a normal mathematical function. All we have to do is multiply (1/49) * (0.15) to get this, which is equivalent and much easier to understand:

• BTC Generated = 0.05 + 0.00306 * (Graphics Cards – 1)

Now, let's get some ground rules for investment:

• Building the empty bitcoin generator: ~300k roubles
• Graphics Card Cost: ~250k roubles
• Bitcoin sale price to Therapist: ~150k roubles

Caveat 3: Prices may change, blah blah blah, unless the IRL bitcoin market crashes the conclusions from this guide will still be accurate for the most part.

I will also note that I'm not going to include the cost for fuel needed for production. Because you can craft expeditionary fuel into mag boxes, as well as do other crafts on your workbench and med station while you have the power on, this cost is negligible. Furthermore, since my thesis is that putting more graphics cards in is not worth it, the fact is that I can prove this mathematically without even accounting for the entire cost category of fuel only strengthens my argument.

Using these assumed prices, let's take a look at some different cases.

Case 1:

Building a Bitcoin Generator and putting a single graphics card in.

To calculate cost, we add the cost of building the empty generator (300k) to the single graphics card (250k) to get 550k rouble investment.

Lets calculate revenue using our formula before:
BTC Generated per Hour = 0.05 + 0.003 * (Graphics Cards – 1)
BTC Generated per Hour = 0.05 + 0.003 * (1 Graphics Cards – 1)
BTC Generated per Hour = 0.05 + 0.003 * (0)
BTC Generated per Hour = 0.05

So we're generating 5% of a bitcoin every hour which means we'll get a bitcoin from our farm every 20 hours.

So, every 20 hours we are generating a product worth ~150k. Since we invested ~550k we need to sell:

550k investment / 150k roubles per bitcoin = 3.66 physical bitcoins in order to recoup our investment

Since we can't harvest bitcoins until they are full, we actually need to wait until we get 4 bitcoins at which point we'll be making a slight profit. Generating 4 bitcoins will take 4 bitcoins * 20 hours per bitcoin = 80 hours or a little more than 3 days.

Case 2:

Adding a second graphics card to our bitcoin farm.

Now, as discussed above I'm not worried about non-FIR graphics cards that you hatchet ran to find. If you have an FIR graphics card then you can sell it on the flea market for the 250k price that I'm using as an assumption above.

This concept is called opportunity cost and if you don't understand it I will troll you in the comments: Putting an FIR graphics card into your bitcoin farm is the same as purchasing one off of the flea market and putting it in your bitcoin farm because you had the opportunity to just sell your FIR graphics card for the same price that you can buy it.

With that out of the way, let's do some math on our 2 graphics card bitcoin farm:

BTC Generated per Hour = 0.05 + 0.003 * (Graphics Cards – 1)
BTC Generated per Hour = 0.05 + 0.003 * (2 Graphics Cards – 1)
BTC Generated per Hour = 0.05 + 0.003 * 1
BTC Generated per Hour = 0.053

So, for the cost of 250k roubles we have increased our bitcoin per hour generation by 0.003.

The first graphics card that we added to our bitcoin farm generates us one bitcoin every 20 hours, as discussed above.

The second graphics card that we added to our bitcoin farm generates 0.003 bitcoins per hour. To calculate how many hours this takes to get 1 bitcoin we do the math of 1 / 0.003 = 333.33 hours. 333.33 hours / 24 hours per day is 13.88 or roughly 14 days.

In order to recoup our investment from the 250k roubles we used to get our second graphics card we divide 250k roubles invested by 150k roubles per bitcoin = 1.66 bitcoins. We generate one bitcoin every 14 days, so we can multiply 14 days * 1.66 bitcoins = 23 days.

This math will hold true for every additional graphics card because the function is linear.

Thus, the payback period for your 250k investment in adding a graphics card past the first one to your bitcoin farm is 23 days.

To reiterate: The FIRST graphics card you put in your bitcoin farm generates a bitcoin every 20 hours. Every additional graphics card you put in your bitcoin farm generates a bitcoin every 333.33 hours.