6 ms·

If hair dryers or clothes dryers used the proof-of-work algorithm--which is designed to be wasteful--then yes, I would ban them.

drexlspivey 5y ago
Actually a dryer that uses POW generated heat would be much less wasteful than just heating up air, it would produce the same amount of heat per watt and it would do something useful with it.
- cguess 5y ago
  "useful" I take it you've never had long hair?
- SantalBlush 5y ago
  Except that isn't true. The chip in the hair dryer would become obsolete before it ever mined a block, so your expensive hair dryer would be even more wasteful. What a ridiculous proposition.
  - drexlspivey 5y ago
    I take it you are not familiar with POW mining? You don’t have to mine a full block, you get paid for any fractional contribution. Any device that converts energy to heat can be replaced by another that converts the same amount of energy to the same amount of heat while doing POW work.
    - SantalBlush 5y ago
      Last I checked, Bitcoin didn't automatically give fractional mining rewards, and one needed to join a mining pool for that. But it doesn't matter, because the reward would be so small in this case that it wouldn't outweigh the cost of buying a chip to put in an appliance. If you think I'm wrong, then by all means mine hardware with all of your heating devices. Hell, if the money is really there, create a startup selling mining appliances and get rich. It's easy money, right? Start today.
lucb1e 5y ago
Honestly if we could limit mining to heating up buildings/hair/whatever, that would solve the problem for a good while. Maybe one day we'll all be on heat pumps and geothermal, but we're not quite there yet.
- Ygg2 5y ago
  Only pump Bitcoin is good at is pump and dump.
  - lucb1e 5y ago
    There is not really an efficiency difference between creating heat from electricity with a space heater and creating heat from electricity with a computer. Not sure if you were just joking or if you simply didn't know that miners can double as heaters without loss (or if you meant something else).
    - Ygg2 5y ago
      Yeah. There is. Heaters don't cost thousands of dollars, maybe more for ASIC. Also heaters are way better at converting energy to heat, since they don't have to do the whole mining thing. And they can reach higher temperatures without frying themselves. Being a simple resistor rather than complex logical circuit. If I spend 1kWh to just warm water vs I spend some part of that 1kWh to mine bitcoin and warm water, the former will be more efficient.
      - lucb1e 5y ago
        > Heaters don't cost thousands of dollars Sure but the point is that this will be earned back easily. If it didn't turn a profit then nobody would buy them today, let alone when they have an extra purpose. > they can reach higher temperatures without frying themselves Sure, we can't replace industrial processes like forging steel with mining. But residential heating requires no more than, say, 70°C which is easily within reach of any chip today. I was specifically talking about replacing something like a space heater, not a process that needs hundreds of degrees. > If I spend 1kWh to just warm water vs I spend some part of that 1kWh to mine bitcoin and warm water, the former will be more efficient. Is that so? How much then? Because I've always heard it's 1:1 for all intents and purposes. Edit: of course I have to look it up myself... https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Gaming-PC-vs-Space-Heater-Efficiency-511/ https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Gaming-PC-vs-Spac... Looking at the graph, it's like I said /edit. --- Note I'm not saying this is necessarily a good idea, it seems ripe for abuse (running the miner also when you don't need the heat) and we'd have more chip shortage issues, but I am interested from a technological standpoint. It seemed to me like it would be an improvement if their waste heat was used.

drexlspivey 5y ago

Actually a dryer that uses POW generated heat would be much less wasteful than just heating up air, it would produce the same amount of heat per watt and it would do something useful with it.

cguess 5y ago
"useful" I take it you've never had long hair?
SantalBlush 5y ago
Except that isn't true. The chip in the hair dryer would become obsolete before it ever mined a block, so your expensive hair dryer would be even more wasteful. What a ridiculous proposition.
- drexlspivey 5y ago
  I take it you are not familiar with POW mining? You don’t have to mine a full block, you get paid for any fractional contribution. Any device that converts energy to heat can be replaced by another that converts the same amount of energy to the same amount of heat while doing POW work.
  - SantalBlush 5y ago
    Last I checked, Bitcoin didn't automatically give fractional mining rewards, and one needed to join a mining pool for that. But it doesn't matter, because the reward would be so small in this case that it wouldn't outweigh the cost of buying a chip to put in an appliance. If you think I'm wrong, then by all means mine hardware with all of your heating devices. Hell, if the money is really there, create a startup selling mining appliances and get rich. It's easy money, right? Start today.

lucb1e 5y ago

Honestly if we could limit mining to heating up buildings/hair/whatever, that would solve the problem for a good while. Maybe one day we'll all be on heat pumps and geothermal, but we're not quite there yet.

Ygg2 5y ago
Only pump Bitcoin is good at is pump and dump.
- lucb1e 5y ago
  There is not really an efficiency difference between creating heat from electricity with a space heater and creating heat from electricity with a computer. Not sure if you were just joking or if you simply didn't know that miners can double as heaters without loss (or if you meant something else).
  - Ygg2 5y ago
    Yeah. There is. Heaters don't cost thousands of dollars, maybe more for ASIC. Also heaters are way better at converting energy to heat, since they don't have to do the whole mining thing. And they can reach higher temperatures without frying themselves. Being a simple resistor rather than complex logical circuit. If I spend 1kWh to just warm water vs I spend some part of that 1kWh to mine bitcoin and warm water, the former will be more efficient.
    - lucb1e 5y ago
      > Heaters don't cost thousands of dollars Sure but the point is that this will be earned back easily. If it didn't turn a profit then nobody would buy them today, let alone when they have an extra purpose. > they can reach higher temperatures without frying themselves Sure, we can't replace industrial processes like forging steel with mining. But residential heating requires no more than, say, 70°C which is easily within reach of any chip today. I was specifically talking about replacing something like a space heater, not a process that needs hundreds of degrees. > If I spend 1kWh to just warm water vs I spend some part of that 1kWh to mine bitcoin and warm water, the former will be more efficient. Is that so? How much then? Because I've always heard it's 1:1 for all intents and purposes. Edit: of course I have to look it up myself... https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Gaming-PC-vs-Space-Heater-Efficiency-511/ https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Gaming-PC-vs-Spac... Looking at the graph, it's like I said /edit. --- Note I'm not saying this is necessarily a good idea, it seems ripe for abuse (running the miner also when you don't need the heat) and we'd have more chip shortage issues, but I am interested from a technological standpoint. It seemed to me like it would be an improvement if their waste heat was used.