Re:Bitcoin mining heats homes for free in Siberia [video]
by mark-r on Friday November 03, 2017 @08:36PM
(#15623184)
At $430/month for the bitcoins, I think they can afford to keep the systems current. Obviously market conditions can change drastically, but they're just as likely to go up as down.
Re:Bitcoin mining heats homes for free in Siberia [video]
by dragonwriter on Friday November 03, 2017 @04:44PM
(#15622080)
> Whether it's money positive vs resistive heating
Strictly speaking, isn't it just a special case of resistive heating?
Re:Bitcoin mining heats homes for free in Siberia [video]
by khedoros1 on Friday November 03, 2017 @05:14PM
(#15622247)
It's resistive heating that does something that most resistive heating doesn't do: generate some level of additional income in the form of cryptocurrency.
Re:Bitcoin mining heats homes for free in Siberia [video]
by Retric on Friday November 03, 2017 @07:12PM
(#15622847)
Only if you need full power heat 24/7 365. If you ever want to turn it off then it's costing you deprecation on very expensive hardware, vs a simple heating element.
Remember, few things need constant heat output 24/7 365, otherwise your going to want to generate some or all of your heat from other sources.
Only obvious if you know what a heat pump is!
Plenty of people will hear "Electrical heating is 100% efficient" and interpret that to mean it's the ideal solution, when in a lot of cases it's just about the worst.
But yes, if you have electrical heating, you could throw in some CPUs or ASICs instead and they'll work just as well. The return on investment for cryptocurrency may drop off a cliff when the next silicon process comes out and mines more for the same energy, it's hard to see people wanting to keep upgrading their baseboard heaters on the same cycle that computers get replaced.
Whether it's money positive vs resistive heating will depend on A) price of your electronics relative to a cheap electric heater, B) how it stacks up vs future electronics if the payoff doesn't happen while it's new, and C) how insane the cryptocurrency markets get.