Heating the house with a bitcoin miner: staying warm with sats

Bitcoin (BTC) miners emit a lot of heat.

Some miners also use that heat to heat swimming pools, dehydrate meat to make beef jerky, or dry wood at a Swedish hydroelectric bitcoin farm. In Ireland, a “Bitcoin farmer” joked that he hangs clothes out to dry in front of his bitcoin miners.

s9 #bitcoin beef jerky pic.twitter.com/Fyc3lz98kQ

– ₿Business Cat (@_business_cat) 12 August 2022

not the slightest heat New to the bitcoin industry. In the early days of bitcoin, enthusiasts mined the cryptocurrency with their everyday computers, leading to stories of overheating and discomfort. Hot Climate.

Bitcoin mining has changed since its early days. With the markedly increased difficulty of solving hash calculations on the bitcoin blockchain, miners have abandoned the ubiquitous graphics processing units for more powerful application specific integrated circuits, or ASICs. However, heating and cooling still remain an issue.

Satoshi Nakamoto, pointing to the future of capturing waste heat shared A message showing foreknowledge:

“If you need to heat your house the heat from your computer isn’t wasted.”

So why not take advantage of that heat and use it to be a productive resource? This is exactly what I wanted to use this winter at my home near Lisbon, Portugal.

Do-it-yourself solutions that utilize bitcoin miner “waste” heat in the home are becoming increasingly popular. However, this can be difficult. The #mine4heat hashtag on Twitter claims bitcoin hobbyists can re-wire and soundproof bitcoin miners – without giving themselves an electric shock.

One savvy miner heats his mobile home, an Airstream, while others have found ingenious ways to mine bitcoin and keep their homes toasty:

Proud DIY basement miner dude who ends his summer by taping garbage bags end to end when I don’t need it 🙂 pic.twitter.com/S1XTz3T08p

— Bark (@Barcinthedark) 21 April 2023

However, for an “average Joe” like me, it seems daunting. I’m a technically weak bitcoin enthusiast who took years to get a node running. So while the idea is tempting, I was afraid I might burn the house down.

There are a number of heater-cum-bitcoin mining companies, such as HeatBit and Bitheater, aware of the potential for bitcoin miners to make money while heating up spaces, but also that demand for plug-and-play solutions may increase.

HeatBit founder Alex Busarov told Cointelegraph that although ease of use was attractive, the environmental use case for bitcoin miner Heat outweighed the mission: “We want to make mining really green,” he said.

Busarov said, “The claims that ‘xx%’ of the energy used for mining comes from renewables” are misleading. Although this number may sound impressive, it ignores the fact that much of this renewable energy would be added to the grid if it were not for industrial mining.

“Bitcoin mining is only really green when it is combined with heating; In this way, no additional energy is consumed in mining.”

Busarov cited statistics and claims published by bitcoin mining advocates, including that bitcoin is the greenest industry and that bitcoin mining encourages renewable energy generation. Nonetheless, bitcoin miners take a lot of heat even when using waste heat for productive purposes.

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Personally, I was more focused on the power of the Heatbit bitcoin miners. If it consumes less power than my standard electric heaters, it won’t be easy to use in winter – so I got one on hand and tested it.

The result: For four months, I heated my tiny flat in Portugal with a Heatbit.

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The package arrived in mid-November during the unseasonably hot summer. I put it on top, unboxed it and scanned the instructions. It seemed too good to be true. The instructions are silly.

I connected the Heatbit to power, downloaded the Heatbit app, and it immediately found the Heatbit device and synchronized. I selected the warm setting and soon felt a stream of warm air coming from the vents on the top. I put my ear to it and was surprised to see how quiet it was.

When fully activated, bitcoin miners make a very loud noise. Some residents of the Norwegian town have also complained about noise from a nearby industrial-scale bitcoin mine, but my fridge is much louder than HeatBit’s.

I waited until I had mined one satoshi – less than a penny – which took about 15 minutes. By that time, my flat’s balcony enclosure was uncomfortably hot, so I closed it.

Over the next few months, I switched the heater on and off, wheeling it around flat on its two rear wheels.

Can you make money from this?

Technically yes – but not really. During the winter I collected 30,000 satoshis, which is a little over $10.

Most evenings the miner would go out for a few hours and in the mornings I would be at home. Sadly, due to trips to Senegal, Poland and Cape Verde during the winter, I wasn’t in Portugal much. If I was at home, I would have gotten about 50,000 more sets of “Heat”.

Plus, my electricity bill was slightly lower than last winter, which is a small success in light of double-digit inflation in Portugal.

However, that misses the point. Herbit is a heater first and a bitcoin miner second. Puts out more heat than my regular heater and requires zero maintenance (so far). Also, as Busarov points out:

“We want to decentralize mining. It is unlikely that Satoshi envisioned mining to be centralized into large farms. The ideal approach is that ‘everyone contributes a little’.

HeatBit contributes to the NiceHash mining pool. Some critics claim that mining pools lead to mining centralization – which the bitcoin community is attempting to overcome in an upcoming way. Stratum V2 Upgrade in mining algorithm. Nonetheless, there have been other unexpected consequences of running a bitcoin miner.

living with a bitcoin miner

In Portugal, central heating is rare. Most of the houses I have lived in use either oil heaters or electric heaters. The Heatbit quickly replaced my electric heater, which was more expensive due to its higher power consumption. The Miner is also quieter, and the heat emitted is consistent and less punchy. However, it’s also 10 times the cost of my electric heater.

Interestingly, the size and stature of the Heatbit raises eyebrows and raises the question, “What is that?” Among friends visiting my flat. The guests were surprised to learn that the white box was mining bitcoin, as they always thought bitcoin mining took place in huge data centers. I showed them how much I made on my phone, and, in a way, the heater is an orange pilling aid.

As Busarov explains, HeatBit aims to “expand the bitcoin community.” “There are far more people using electric heaters than miners,” he said. Devices such as easy-to-use at-home bitcoin heater miners are another step towards greater adoption.

The downside is the price tag and size. The unit is large, heavy and costs over $1,000 brand new. Given that in Portugal, I use the heater four to five months a year, the Heatbit becomes a huge paperweight from April to October.

Ultimately, it will take a few years to pay for itself at current price levels in a hot country like Portugal. Naturally, if bitcoin was priced in six digits, it would be a different story.

Also, on Reddit and YouTube reviews, some users have reported problems with use concerns About Customer Service.

Plus, the mainstream and plug-and-play nature of Heatbit runs counter to the ethos of DIY bitcoin miners, who see the company as profiting on something a person can do themselves. And originally, bitcoin was first promoted by hobbyists, so it makes sense.

To Heatbit’s credit, he listened. The company is introducing a smaller heater, the “Heatbit Mini,” from $299 for the next European winter. Busarov explains:

“We also added air purifying functionality, making the device usable all year round. And, as the name suggests, the (Heatbit) Mini is small in size – less than 50cm tall – making it convenient to place in any room.

The Heatbit Mini consumes 300 watts for mining and air purification, which can be increased to 1,300 watts during winter. The 300-watt setting still contributes a full 10 terahashes per second, while the native Heatbit hash rate drops as soon as the dial is down.

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This should mean that you can run it as an air purifier and heater all year round. Naturally, I signed up for one.

This article is for general information purposes and should not be construed as legal or investment advice. The views, opinions and opinions expressed here are those of the author alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.