5 ms·

My heater doesn't become less effective each year, requiring replacement. While ASIC concretely implies this, GPU is not excluded if you want to remain competit

by 0des 5y ago

My heater doesn't become less effective each year, requiring replacement. While ASIC concretely implies this, GPU is not excluded if you want to remain competitive (read: generating profit)

matheusmoreira 5y ago
It doesn't have to be competitive. 4+ kWh electric showers are ubiquitous in my country. Literally a dumb piece of metal resistance immersed in water. Anything is better than the current situation. What if it was a processor instead? What if a bunch of home servers could heat up stored water through their heat instead of just dissipating that energy uselessly into the air? We'd be getting the heat we need and we'd be helping build a decentralized cash network. We were gonna spend energy heating up stuff anyway. Might as well get some cryptocurrency out of that heat.
- thinkmassive 5y ago
  This is what WiseMining.io is addressing with their Sato “bitcoin boiler.” It uses hashcards (daughterboards populated with mining ASICs) immersed in coolant to augment a typical heat pump setup.
  - matheusmoreira 5y ago
    That's interesting. My search for products in this category turned up the Qarnot company which also has a "digital boiler". Apparently, it's a general purpose Linux server that can be used to mine any coin or perform any type of computation. https://qarnot.com/en/heating-water/ https://qarnot.com/en/heating-water/ Not sure if it's even available outside Europe. I wonder if it's possible to somehow replicate this with a home server. How is it pumping the heat out of the components and into the water system?
- bserge 5y ago
  A datacenter that doubles as district heating seems like a pretty good idea.
rlpb 5y ago
You might say that a regular electric heater is 100% efficient, converting every unit of electricity into exactly one unit of equivalent heat. Crypto mining hardware is >100% efficient, as it's exactly as efficient as an electric heater, but also generates revenue. Over time, others make more efficient crypto mining hardware, reducing the yield from yours. This causes your "efficiency" to gradually reduce down to 100%, but no lower. However, nowadays we have heat pumps, which are also more efficient than our 100% benchmark, and produce additional useful heat.
- hvis 5y ago
  > Crypto mining hardware is >100% efficient It also makes the hardware depreciate (simply with the passage of time, but also because of the particular usage), which in practice effects the balance and can easily turn the monetary efficiency into negative.

by 0des 5y ago

My heater doesn't become less effective each year, requiring replacement. While ASIC concretely implies this, GPU is not excluded if you want to remain competitive (read: generating profit)

matheusmoreira 5y ago

It doesn't have to be competitive. 4+ kWh electric showers are ubiquitous in my country. Literally a dumb piece of metal resistance immersed in water. Anything is better than the current situation. What if it was a processor instead? What if a bunch of home servers could heat up stored water through their heat instead of just dissipating that energy uselessly into the air? We'd be getting the heat we need and we'd be helping build a decentralized cash network. We were gonna spend energy heating up stuff anyway. Might as well get some cryptocurrency out of that heat.

thinkmassive 5y ago
This is what WiseMining.io is addressing with their Sato “bitcoin boiler.” It uses hashcards (daughterboards populated with mining ASICs) immersed in coolant to augment a typical heat pump setup.
- matheusmoreira 5y ago
  That's interesting. My search for products in this category turned up the Qarnot company which also has a "digital boiler". Apparently, it's a general purpose Linux server that can be used to mine any coin or perform any type of computation. https://qarnot.com/en/heating-water/ https://qarnot.com/en/heating-water/ Not sure if it's even available outside Europe. I wonder if it's possible to somehow replicate this with a home server. How is it pumping the heat out of the components and into the water system?
bserge 5y ago
A datacenter that doubles as district heating seems like a pretty good idea.

rlpb 5y ago

You might say that a regular electric heater is 100% efficient, converting every unit of electricity into exactly one unit of equivalent heat. Crypto mining hardware is >100% efficient, as it's exactly as efficient as an electric heater, but also generates revenue. Over time, others make more efficient crypto mining hardware, reducing the yield from yours. This causes your "efficiency" to gradually reduce down to 100%, but no lower. However, nowadays we have heat pumps, which are also more efficient than our 100% benchmark, and produce additional useful heat.

hvis 5y ago
> Crypto mining hardware is >100% efficient It also makes the hardware depreciate (simply with the passage of time, but also because of the particular usage), which in practice effects the balance and can easily turn the monetary efficiency into negative.