Vitalik Buterin Compares Bitcoin Mining and AI Inference Compute Cost Structures

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin published a comparative cost breakdown contrasting Bitcoin mining economics with artificial intelligence inference workloads. Bitcoin mining expenses total an estimated $93,700 per coin, split between compute capex at around 40% ($37,600) and electricity at roughly 45.9% ($40,600 to $43,000). Conversely, AI inference expenses reach about $26,260 per GPU-year, with hardware capex driving roughly 76% ($19,900) and electricity contributing just 4.8% ($1,260). The contrasting economics highlight why miners such as Core Scientific, MARA Holdings, and TeraWulf are increasingly pivoting power infrastructure to AI and high-performance computing colocation.