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They couldn't at least reuse them? Are mining rigs useful for purposes other than mining?
by jxf 5y ago
They couldn't at least reuse them? Are mining rigs useful for purposes other than mining?
- dogorman 5y agoI think you mean reuse, not recycle. The first step in most recycling processes is a shredder.
- jxf 5y agoTrue enough; edited.
- londons_explore 5y agoMost mining rigs have zero use for anything but mining. A few mining systems are GPU's (used for mining certain types of crypto), and those can be resold for other uses, although typically after being used for a few years for mining they might be damaged and no longer usable for other uses.
- ars 5y ago> Are mining rigs useful for purposes other than mining? Nope. Other than maybe the power supply they are single purpose devices - they crack hashes, that's it.
- captn3m0 5y agoMight be good for computing rainbow tables perhaps? But not much use for sha256 hashes.
- dawnerd 5y agoBitcoin asics are basically just ewaste once they’re no longer useful or profitable. Since they’re designed for just Bitcoin there’s not really any other use. You can get older asics first cheap on the secondary market (although most sellers try to scam people not knowing previous generation miners are useless). Maybe useful if you want a unique way to heat a room?
- jxf 5y agoThen I wish they'd recycled them instead of destroyed them.
- MiguelHudnandez 5y agoAn early step in recycling is usually shredding. It's better to remove big things made of known metals first (like copper wires and aluminum cases), but if they keep it all together it can still be processed.
- sfe22 5y agoAlso expensive way to heat a room, and loud
- Nextgrid 5y ago> expensive Compared to heat pumps? Yes. But compared to resistive electric heating it's just as good (if not better, since you could theoretically recoup some of the burned energy as cryptocurrencies).
- autokad 5y agohas anyone ever actually calculated that? like what if we used old ASICs to heat our rooms, would they be more efficient than a heater after accounting for the small number of bitcoin you'd get?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- detaro 5y agoDepends. FPGA-based ones can be purposed for other things in principle, ASIC-based ones probably not, and afaik the latter is what's common for Bitcoin.
- thrtythreeforty 5y agoMy understanding is that FPGAs have been unprofitable for Bitcoin since the first ASICs were taped out. FPGAs are still profitable for other coins that are memory-limited. Bitcoin is just brute force compute.
- JCWasmx86 5y agoMaybe do some number crunching for science?
- robbedpeter 5y agoMalaysia: Crunching achieved!
- user-the-name 5y agoThey can not do number crunching. They only do bitcoin hashes.
- AlexCoventry 5y agoMaybe they could be used to study the distribution of SHA256 hashes, with an eye to uncovering vulnerabilities in the algorithm?
- AlexCoventry 5y agoI'd be grateful for any insight into why this suggestion was downvoted. Is it a silly idea for some reason?