4 ms·

I'm very curious how that can be better then an electrical heater. It has to be more inefficient as you are not spending energy on calculation but if you subst

by Empf 5y ago

I'm very curious how that can be better then an electrical heater. It has to be more inefficient as you are not spending energy on calculation but if you substitute it with selling your bitcoins you would need to compensate your co2

CarelessExpert 5y ago
Because it also generates revenue via bitcoin. So it's "cheaper" insofar as the bitcoin is subsidizing the operation of the rig and, as a byproduct, heating the space.
arsome 5y ago
My understanding is it's essentially just as efficient as a resistive electrical heater as all the energy used in your video card is converted to heat at some point in the process. There may be some very minor loss here, but I'm not enough of a physicist to say what it'd be.
- Empf 5y ago
  That's what I'm wondering. It costs energy to move electrons
  - bluGill 5y ago
    That energy is all turned into heat. Waste from the point of view of a bitcoin mining attempt. However heat is a useful byproduct in this case when the local temperature is lower than the inhabitant would desire.
awrence 5y ago
It's pretty brilliant actually. Case 1 electric space heaters blindly pass electricity through dumb wires. Case 2 instead of dumb wires you use ASICs. Case 2 is a win win that helps secure a decentralized monetary asset, get paid for it, and heat your home which you would have done anyway, all with the exact same carbon footprint (assuming you're expending equivalent amount of electricity to just heat your home as originally planned). You've basically turned PoW into proof of heating where the miner gets paid and gets the benefit of heating his home on top. And incremental environmental impact is exactly 0. edit: quick google -> and here it is :) https://bitcoinminingheater.com https://bitcoinminingheater.com
- matheusmoreira 5y ago
  Wow, this is actually amazing. In my country electric showers are really popular. They're literally just big resistances immersed in water. I wonder how long it'll take for them to put cryptocurrency miners in there.
  - awrence 5y ago
    My shower pays for itself :)
    - matheusmoreira 5y ago
      Now long showers aren't just relaxing but profitable too. Awesome.
- Empf 5y ago
  But how much energy is used percentage wise for mining?
  - Nextgrid 5y ago
    Technically a "perfect" miner would use zero energy (beyond microamps for driving the signal wires in the network cables), the heat comes from imperfect components that "waste" energy by turning it into heat. So the mining itself doesn't use any energy, it's just that instead of dumping power into a dumb coil of wire, you dump it into a smarter coil of wires and various components that produce some output (that happens to be valuable to the Bitcoin network and it rewards you in exchange) as a side-effect. For any given watt of electricity, the heat output is the same, just that with a miner you also get useful calculation results out of it.
    - Empf 5y ago
      That's not possible. Physically speaking
      - 5y ago

by Empf 5y ago

CarelessExpert 5y ago

Because it also generates revenue via bitcoin. So it's "cheaper" insofar as the bitcoin is subsidizing the operation of the rig and, as a byproduct, heating the space.

arsome 5y ago

My understanding is it's essentially just as efficient as a resistive electrical heater as all the energy used in your video card is converted to heat at some point in the process. There may be some very minor loss here, but I'm not enough of a physicist to say what it'd be.

Empf 5y ago
That's what I'm wondering. It costs energy to move electrons
- bluGill 5y ago
  That energy is all turned into heat. Waste from the point of view of a bitcoin mining attempt. However heat is a useful byproduct in this case when the local temperature is lower than the inhabitant would desire.

awrence 5y ago

It's pretty brilliant actually. Case 1 electric space heaters blindly pass electricity through dumb wires. Case 2 instead of dumb wires you use ASICs. Case 2 is a win win that helps secure a decentralized monetary asset, get paid for it, and heat your home which you would have done anyway, all with the exact same carbon footprint (assuming you're expending equivalent amount of electricity to just heat your home as originally planned). You've basically turned PoW into proof of heating where the miner gets paid and gets the benefit of heating his home on top. And incremental environmental impact is exactly 0. edit: quick google -> and here it is :) https://bitcoinminingheater.com https://bitcoinminingheater.com

matheusmoreira 5y ago
Wow, this is actually amazing. In my country electric showers are really popular. They're literally just big resistances immersed in water. I wonder how long it'll take for them to put cryptocurrency miners in there.
- awrence 5y ago
  My shower pays for itself :)
  - matheusmoreira 5y ago
    Now long showers aren't just relaxing but profitable too. Awesome.
Empf 5y ago
But how much energy is used percentage wise for mining?
- Nextgrid 5y ago
  Technically a "perfect" miner would use zero energy (beyond microamps for driving the signal wires in the network cables), the heat comes from imperfect components that "waste" energy by turning it into heat. So the mining itself doesn't use any energy, it's just that instead of dumping power into a dumb coil of wire, you dump it into a smarter coil of wires and various components that produce some output (that happens to be valuable to the Bitcoin network and it rewards you in exchange) as a side-effect. For any given watt of electricity, the heat output is the same, just that with a miner you also get useful calculation results out of it.
  - Empf 5y ago
    That's not possible. Physically speaking
    - 5y ago