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Re:Bitcoin mining becomes unprofitable as BTC price falls to... by bialpio on Sunday June 19, 2022 @03:41AM (#31797137)
Half-serious counterpoint: if you use electric space heaters, might as well mine bitcoin to heat up the house. In that case it's still rational to mine because you'd use that energy anyway.
Re:Bitcoin mining becomes unprofitable as BTC price falls to... by miniwark on Sunday June 19, 2022 @04:04AM (#31797263)
1/4 serious reply: except than you can probably heat the house the same with less energy, or put you money in thermal insolation.

All in all agree than BTC will adjust is difficulty with long term economics, and so, it will not be quick, short-term actors will lose money.

Re:Bitcoin mining becomes unprofitable as BTC price falls to... by fragmede on Sunday June 19, 2022 @04:25AM (#31797378)
When people are renting and don't own their own home, the incentive to actually improve the property isn't there, so an extra expensive space heater that can be moved to the next place has more value than improved insulation.
Re:Bitcoin mining becomes unprofitable as BTC price falls to... by rag-hav on Sunday June 19, 2022 @04:32AM (#31797419)
> you can probably heat the house the same with less energy

No, a 1000 watt heater is just as efficient as a 1000 watt computer in heating.

Re:Bitcoin mining becomes unprofitable as BTC price falls to... by scheme271 on Sunday June 19, 2022 @05:05AM (#31797586)
That's true but a 1000W heat pump can get you 3000W of heating. I.e. if you use a given amount of energy to transfer heat from the outside, you effectively get more than 100% (most heat pumps are at 300% efficiency).
Re:Bitcoin mining becomes unprofitable as BTC price falls to... by LoveMortuus on Sunday June 19, 2022 @09:27AM (#31799165)
Efficiency can't be higher then 100%, if it could be then you've got a perpetual motion device or in other words, you're creating new energy that didn't exist in the universe before - breaking physics.

Not to mention that heat pump efficiency isn't linear as it depends on the humidity and temperature in which it's operating.

Electric heaters more or less just lose energy in light that they produce, which is quite often negligible.

Re:Bitcoin mining becomes unprofitable as BTC price falls to... by BaseballPhysics on Sunday June 19, 2022 @11:24AM (#31800248)
You confusion is a failure to understand what heat pumps are doing.

An electric heater uses 1000W of electricity to increase the energy in an air volume directly.

Heat pumps use 1000W of electricity to transfer energy from one area to another.

In the former case, the energy in the warmed air is entirely from the supply of electricity.

In the latter case, the energy in the warmed air comes from the intake air and the electricity is only used to move that energy around.

So absolutely a heat pump using 1000W of electricity can move 3000W of thermal energy from the hot side to the cold side.

This, by the way, is why you're absolutely right that efficiency is variable, as it depends on the energy gradient between intake and output.

Re:Bitcoin mining becomes unprofitable as BTC price falls to... by SigmundA on Sunday June 19, 2022 @01:25PM (#31801382)
>Efficiency can't be higher then 100%, if it could be then you've got a perpetual motion device or in other words, you're creating new energy that didn't exist in the universe before - breaking physics.

Only in a closed system, heat pumps are not a closed system, they take advantage of ambient heat in the environment which brings efficiency above unity if measured as power input vs heat output.

Re:Bitcoin mining becomes unprofitable as BTC price falls to... by rightbyte on Sunday June 19, 2022 @11:46AM (#31800408)
It is called appearant efficiency and it can be and usually are greater than 1.
Re:Bitcoin mining becomes unprofitable as BTC price falls to... by usr1106 on Sunday June 19, 2022 @06:09AM (#31797951)
But yearly deprecation cost of a 1000 W heater is significantly lower than that of 1000 W computer equipment usable for bitcoin mining.