The state of Virginia which I reside in allows me to grow up to four cannabis plants at a time. Selling what I grow is illegal, but I can give away to adults as much as I want without expected form of reciprocation. I consume everything I grow, minus what I give away. But I was curious how profitable it is to grow cannabis compared to if I had to buy it. Though we do not have a legal established market here to estimate exactly the costs, but knowing around what it goes for in my area will help me figure out costs.
First lets look at how profitable mining bitcoin is, since I use solar I will not be including any cost basis for power consumption.
24 hour profit my Bitcoin miners is $12.21 each right now. But I only plan on running them during the day when I am using solar. So really only eight hours a day will be actually mining. So that is closer to $4.07 a day at current prices. So a Bitmain S21 Pro miner can earn me around $1485.55 a year using just solar power. That would be considering every day is a clear sunny day, enough to power a miner.
Running the grow lights longer than day time solar production hours would affect this calculation a little. As the lights need to be ran anywhere from 18 hours to 12 hours. But my solar batteries can provide the small amount of power a LED grow tent setup needs. It uses a fraction of what a ASIC miner would. So I will still consider this without using any grid power.
Now for me to compare the two, I need to consider how long one grow takes. I will say four months. I will say a harvest of four plants will be around half a pound.
I can grow that 3 times a year indoors. So that would be 1.5 pounds a year of cannabis grown within my legal limit of four plants.
1.5 pounds of cannabis can be grown a year. Four plants with three harvests. Valued at $4800
Mining bitcoin for 8 hours a day for a year on a single rig will earn me $1485.55
There are other costs for growing weed, like acquiring seeds and fertilizer costs. But it would not be more than $250 a year so its such a small expense it would not be included.
What about start up costs? Well a Bitmain S21 Pro is around $3200 right now. And the return on my investment is two to three years.
Cost to start growing cannabis is around $1200 for the tent, light, fans, ducting, timers and enough fertilizers to get you started. So even considering start up costs, the first grow will pay for itself.
Based on these calculations, growing weed is more profitable than mining Bitcoin. But.. as the price of cannabis drops, and as the price of Bitcoin rises.. that could possibly flip one day.. maybe not but its possible, just not probable. The price of cannabis has dropped a lot over 10 years, and maybe we will see it drop even further as more places allow you to grow cannabis legally.
So if you live in a place its legal to grow cannabis, and you get high on your own supply. Maybe consider growing cannabis before mining Bitcoins.
Or do both! You can even grow Bitcoins in a grow tent if you want. Though I recommend keeping the plants and miners in separate tents.
Ask me again when Bitcoin’s cost a million dollars each, my answer may have changed.