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I heat my home by mining crypto currencies

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Re: I heat my home by mining crypto currencies

#51

Post by bayindirh »

ryankrage77 wrote: post #39
neilalexander wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The computing-heater warms buildings ecologically and for free, thanks to the waste heat released by embedded microprocessors. By performing complex IT operations... ... which are what, exactly?

Going by the vaguness of the site, I wouldn't be suprised if they're mining bitcoin for themselves while you pay for the electricity. Edit: Dug around some more, looks like they're building a BOINC-like service? https://computing.qarnot.com/en/

If I remember correctly, they pay for the network and electricity use of the heater. They rent the platform for computation to other third parties.

So you, store and cool the computer for free. They probably sell directly to buildings and municipalities during construction, so it's installed and left there.

So you either just rent it for a nominal fee or pay nothing.

Re: I heat my home by mining crypto currencies

#52

Post by hvidgaard »

xvector wrote: post #43
celticninja wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand your point but it does gloss over the fact that the calculations are useful to the bitcoin network in terms of security.

In other words, when the last Bitcoin is mined, Bitcoin is well and truly fucked. Bitcoin and other non-inflationary proof-of-work coins need to switch to proof-of-stake if they want any hope of longevity.

It is assumed that transaction fees will be enough to incentivize miners.

Re: I heat my home by mining crypto currencies

#53

Post by IgorPartola »

dmos62 wrote: post #37
dreen wrote: post #3

Years ago when mining with a single gaming card was more common and viable, I lived in a rented room in a house owned by a live-in landlord who controlled the heating, and wouldn't turn it on for very long in the winter. Since electricity was included in my (fixed) rent, I was able to keep my room a few degrees higher than the rest of the house. However I must point out that you shouldn't do this in most circumstance…

> However I must point out that you shouldn't do this in most circumstances, there are environmentally friendly ways of heating your house. What aspect do you think could be friendlier to the environment? Rare metals and production emissions in high tech electronics? Or the fact that it's using electricity (as opposed to more isolation)?

Your electricity likely comes from burning coal. Coal pollutes quite badly.

Other ways to heat a dwelling are more efficient. For example natural gas heaters burn cleaner and energy losses are much smaller compared to all the conversion losses (by the time you produce a BTU of heat from electricity, several BTUs of energy have been lost due to conversion losses, while burning gas is much closer to perfect efficiency though obviously not perfectly efficient). Or if you can use co-generation, you essentially produce no noticeable environmental impact at all. Or you could go the other route and invest in insulation or a molten salt wall for passive heating.

Re: I heat my home by mining crypto currencies

#54

Post by dmos62 »

jariel wrote: post #11

Future humans will wonder why humanity wasted so much valuable time, effort and real for no reason.

Do you really think Bitcoin mining/speculation is up there with the most wasteful and counter-productive things we do? It doesn't currently have much social value, but, man, there's much worse things. Think of US military spending. If you think that military has a reason to be, while speculation doesn't, you don't understand speculation.

Re: I heat my home by mining crypto currencies

#55

Post by mtsr »

inter_netuser wrote: post #47
lmilcin wrote: post #10

I wonder if we could make it even better and make smart heaters that instead of wasting calculations actually do something useful, something like folding proteins or some other computing load that doesn't require huge network load and can be easily distributed (something like SETI@home but actually useful). In densely populated cities we could bury huge datacenters underground and use that energy for heating directly…

It is not wasted. This is the most common misunderstanding on this forum. Miners are required to provable expend effort in order to become eligible to produce a block. 2nd law of thermodynamics as core security mechanism, as it cannot be reversed. If you were to improve efficiency by routing excess heat for other purposes, it will gradually spread across the entire mining industry, and eventually you end up right whe…

Which is OPs point. The energy has to be wasted, or else everyone will do it to reduce cost and the difficulty just goes up until the net mining reward is similar to what it is now.

And that for something that’s almost exclusively used for speculation, because for anything else transactions costs are too high...

Re: I heat my home by mining crypto currencies

#56

Post by hsbauauvhabzb »

inter_netuser wrote: post #47
lmilcin wrote: post #10

I wonder if we could make it even better and make smart heaters that instead of wasting calculations actually do something useful, something like folding proteins or some other computing load that doesn't require huge network load and can be easily distributed (something like SETI@home but actually useful). In densely populated cities we could bury huge datacenters underground and use that energy for heating directly…

It is not wasted. This is the most common misunderstanding on this forum. Miners are required to provable expend effort in order to become eligible to produce a block. 2nd law of thermodynamics as core security mechanism, as it cannot be reversed. If you were to improve efficiency by routing excess heat for other purposes, it will gradually spread across the entire mining industry, and eventually you end up right whe…

What?

Re: I heat my home by mining crypto currencies

#58

Post by innocenat »

lmilcin wrote: post #26
medstrom wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Produce electricity? I assume electricity was used to do the computation in the first place, turning into let's say 80% work and 20% heat. The idea was to use that 20% to heat our homes. The original electricity still needs to come from elsewhere.

When I said Data Center can produce electricity I did not mean that it can produce as much or more than it takes in. I thought this obvious enough that it did not have to be said. But alas, it has to be said. No, you can't create perpetuum mobile ie. build a machine that given a supply of energy produces as much or even more energy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perpetuum_mobile

It is still not viable.

Assume your datacenter runs at 50C (122F) and the temperature outside is -40C (-40F), using the datacenter heat to generate electricity has theoretical maximum efficiency of 27.85%. If your datacenter is at 23C (73F) and room temp is 0C (32F), then the theoretical maximum is 7.77%. Note the word 'theoretical maximum', in reality probably at least 10 times worse than that.

Re: I heat my home by mining crypto currencies

#59

Post by cjrp »

berdario wrote: post #34
dreen wrote: post #3

Years ago when mining with a single gaming card was more common and viable, I lived in a rented room in a house owned by a live-in landlord who controlled the heating, and wouldn't turn it on for very long in the winter. Since electricity was included in my (fixed) rent, I was able to keep my room a few degrees higher than the rest of the house. However I must point out that you shouldn't do this in most circumstance…

I'm in a similar situation, and I'm just using an electric heater... No fancy mining setup. But I'm also thinking, maybe actually this is for the better? (Not only for the stingy landlord, but for the environment). I mean, even if a heat pump is much better than an electric heater... Having to heat up only the rooms that need it, instead of kitchen, bathrooms, living room (plus the rooms of other flatmates who might…

I'm not sure if they're common where you are, but this is what Thermostatic Radiator Valves are used for. You can set an approximate room temperature, and the valve will open/close based on that. There are also smart ones now which can have a schedule applied to them, e.g. don't heat my bedroom during the day.

Re: I heat my home by mining crypto currencies

#60

Post by virgo_eye »

okl wrote: post #46
VMG wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cryptocurrency mining doesn't actually require huge network load

I would call ~80 TWhpa "huge": https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption/

Network load here refers to bandwidth on the internet, not power consumption on the electricity grid, I believe.
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