Bitcoin mining is costing South Koreans a lot of money.

Mining just one bitcoin in one of the world's biggest digital currency markets costs $26,170, according to data released by lighting and furniture firm Elite Fixtures.

So-called bitcoin miners are vital to keeping the underlying blockchain, or distributed ledger, network tick. A blockchain network is essentially a huge decentralized database that maintains a continuously growing record of transactions or other data. Miners solve complex mathematical problems to validate transactions and add them to the blockchain.

The Elite Fixtures data also showed that Venezuela is the cheapest country in which to mine bitcoin. It costs $531 to mine the world's best known virtual currency there. Some Venezuelans have turned to bitcoin mining for survival in the economically struggling South American country.