Running a Bitcoin node doesn't pay: 2 euros for 48 hours online

Running a Bitcoin node doesn't even cover the electricity bill: 2 euros for 48 hours

How much does a Bitcoin node pay for keeping your computer on? Four cents an hour. In real-world terms: about two euros for 48 hours of the machine running, day and night, without ever shutting it down. The experiment was carried out by someone who tested it firsthand and ended up uninstalling it as soon as their two-day session was over. It's not an isolated case: it's the arithmetic of almost any home cryptocurrency node.

A reward that doesn't even cover a coffee

The numbers are ruthless. The reward for keeping the node active comes to 0.04 per hour; multiplied by 48 hours, that leaves a market value of around €2. On the other side of the ledger, the electricity cost of a home computer at idle —roughly a couple of euros a day— wipes out any expectation before you even start. The associated token trades below €2, so even accumulating it doesn't get you out of pocket-change territory. The conclusion of the experiment's author himself: forget the node and buy directly, at a rate of €150 a month.

Does the PC wear out from being left on for two days?

There's no consensus here. Some argue that a personal computer is designed to work uninterrupted for years —university machines have lasted more than four years without being switched off— and that the node barely demands resources: 2% of processing power, with most of the work delegated to the cloud while you do something else. Others point out that running a node is not mining: real mining saturates the CPU and GPU, requires dedicated ASIC equipment and has only historically been worthwhile with cheap electricity.

The conclusion, after a two-day test: better to buy the token directly. You save yourself the electricity bill and the ecological guilt. Highly profitable. For the power company.