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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

#131

Post by user-the-name »

lmilcin wrote: post #107
lrem wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait, why heat pumps are not viable in an urban setting?

For many reasons. First, transporting heat as opposed to electricity is very wasteful, so you only want to transport it in very short distances. Second, typically even small single family home requires quite large volume to store the heat effectively for many months. It isn't that complex only because in a single family home setting you already have a bunch of uncontested land available so you can use the volume that…

I think you are thinking of something very different than what "heat pumps" actually are? They don't involve storing heat, they're just an inverse fridge.

Re: I heat my home by mining crypto currencies

#132

Post by m463 »

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…

I've wondered the same thing every time I hear of "bitcoin will change the climate".

I think we could even design processors differently if heat was not part of the equation. Right now it's all about perf-per-watt, which gives up absolute speed.

Also it would be fun to say "It was so cold that night, " like "I could raytrace in realtime" or "I mined 1 bitcoin" or "crysis ran 10,000fps"

Re: I heat my home by mining crypto currencies

#133

Post by mensetmanusman »

kuon wrote: post #108

I am always amazed that some countries allow electricity for heating. Here it is mostly geothermal, solar, gas or oil (the last two being phased out). There are also a lot of cities with distant heating, for example, here, the garbage factory heat the whole city while burning the garbages. But well, if you can mine crypto while heating, good I guess, even if there might be better ways to use compute power.

The future will be electric heating for everyone, once we have enough renewable and storage sources.

Re: I heat my home by mining crypto currencies

#134

Post by vladvasiliu »

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…

I think that could be interesting. As others have said, whatever the computations are, if they are being done anyway, might as well use the generated heat for something useful instead of letting it go to waste.

But I wonder what would happen with such a system in the summer? For example in most on France it gets pretty cold for long enough every year that having a proper heating system and good insulation makes financial sense. But during the summer it's pretty hot, especially in cities. While the heating can be turned off between March and October (give or take), Facebook & co would probably like their DC to keep on working, so to keep on heating, year round.

Re: I heat my home by mining crypto currencies

#136

Post by sep_field »

jki275 wrote: post #118
bouncycastle wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a fallacy that high hashrate means high security. What matters is the % of miners that are honest. (See bitcoin.pdf) High hashrate just means higher difficulty. (The difficulty controls the average time between blocks, so it's always targeting to be 10 min on average). Also, for heating your home, mining bitcoin could end you up with a loss. For example, your heater needs an internet connection, and your heater…

What matters is the % of miners who don’t collude. Honesty isn’t the issue, collusion is. The entire concept of Bitcoin assumes dishonest players. The only real attack is for miners to combine hash power to get over 50% of the network hash rate so they can execute double spends - and even that is self defeating as doing so degrades confidence and by extension price.

Only once it gets publicized. You have a window to sell and make an enormous profit before people notice and then the entire bit-conomy gets wrecked. I hope this happens as it is a much better outcome to this mess we've created than wrecking the biosphere.

Re: I heat my home by mining crypto currencies

#137

Post by user-the-name »

celticninja wrote: post #19
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…

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

Only if you assume the conclusion.

Re: I heat my home by mining crypto currencies

#138

Post by wffurr »

ketamine__ wrote: post #122
dgellow wrote: post #121

> If you keep your coins longer than the one-year speculation period, it's tax free. You still have to pay income taxes on the mining reward (same for staking rewards). The 1 year period is only for capital gains, so only for the benefits made when selling the asset.

There are no tax free capital gains?

OP is in Austria.

Re: I heat my home by mining crypto currencies

#139

Post by brightball »

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…

Part of me wonders if we aren’t getting there now. The crypto craze is driving more heavy compute setups around the globe than anything else.

When it finally slows down (if ever) what will all of that hardware be used for?

Re: I heat my home by mining crypto currencies

#140

Post by zirkonit »

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…

Another one: Yandex (disclosure: the company I work for) is using one of its datacenters to heat the entire town it is in.

Proof: https://helsinkismart.fi/case/waste-not-want-not-data-center...

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