Analyst: 98% of Bitcoin Mining Rigs Won't Produce a Block

98% of bitcoin mining rigs won't make a calculation that leads to a reward, PwC blockchain specialist Alex de Vries recently told The Telegraph. That means they're using up tons of energy while not earning any digital gold. Let's break it down:

• Miners earn new tokens by solving difficult cryptographic math problems. The first miner to correctly crunch the numbers produces a new block of transactions (on the chain) and earns 12.5 bitcoin, or roughly $109,000.
• The bitcoin network's hash rate, aka total processing power, is near a record high. That doesn't help the odds a college student with a dorm-room mining setup trying to earn some side coin.

Most miners don't go it alone

They combine processing power by forming pools. But de Vries said that doesn't necessarily help them generate a new block, so most machines are "running pointlessly" and wasting energy. It's estimated that bitcoin has a comparable carbon footprint to New Zealand.

Bottom line: The golden days for most miners are over. Most mining machines will soon be obsolete...at least for earning bitcoin.