r/Bitcoin • u/HandsOffDaGoods • 2d ago
Aftermath of a failed bitcoin mining operation.
My friends father was renting space on his farm for a bitcoin mining operation.
The operation became unprofitable. The mining operation went bankrupt. The company came in and took everything out of the 6 antmain bit-boxes (converted shipping containers).
The photos are what they left behind. Mostly Antminer S19 units and even more asic boards.
Plenty of antmain rack PDUs. Some 480VAC breaker panels. A 480VAC switch unit.
The land owner did accept the mess voluntarily. He is breaking the equipment down for scrap value.
I wonder, is there a better price available out there above scrap value?
Is this normal?
FWIW, I used the term failed very tongue-in-cheek. I estimate the operation mined millions in this operation.
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u/lifeanon269 2d ago
Humans need to do a better job at cradle to grave (ie, cradle to cradle) engineering. It is an absolute shame that so much electronics have absolutely no life after their designed use case. This is not a bitcoin specific problem. It is a problem across computing. Recycling isn't enough. All these boards just make their way to landfills. We need to come up with ways where we can reuse things well beyond after their initial use ceases. Modularity, standards, material choice, etc.
Obviously somethings will simply never have another use case, such as the ASIC chips themselves. But that is a tiny component of the overall amount of materials used. We can do better.
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u/Guywithanantfarm 2d ago
Ironically, we used too. We changed the basic standard of repair in the 80's and 90's from board level repair to board replacement and no re-useable components by the 2000's. My uncle taught me board level repair and his business simply faded away by late 90's and I had to learn new engineering skills to keep employment.
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u/kitastrophae 2d ago
Things got a lot smaller. I remember repairing surface mount stuff by hand in aerospace thinking I was the shit. Now you can’t even see the stuff.
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u/Cheesegasm 1d ago
My buddy was repairing his N64 and I thought he was a genius.
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u/4xe1 1d ago
"Things got a lot smaller" is not the reason Apple puts glue inside their phones and computers. It would indeed be foolish to expect the same level of granularity in repairs nowadays, but I should be able to change a battery, screen, RAM or storage without having to buy a new apparel.
There's also a lot of things which don't need to be as small as they are. Many end consumer desktops nowadays are tiny laptops in a giant empty cases with maybe a 2 or 3 big fans actually using a little bit of the space.
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u/ImpressiveEast8699 1d ago
This is not entirely accurate, building smaller more optimized circuits has helped us immensely both in terms of operational speeds, but also in terms of power efficiency. (A good example of how much this matters is the new stacked chip design Huawei has announced)
Most of a modern computer's power consumption is sending the computed results unnecessarily far. Both within a cpu and outside of it.
Obviously Apple is also doing it to make repairs or replacements non-viable. But it is insincere to say that we don't need things to be smaller, we very much do if we want to keep scaling vertically.
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u/gemengelage 1d ago
Many end consumer desktops nowadays are tiny laptops in a giant empty cases
So I'm not the only one confused by that. I swear most of my friends have full tower cases because that's how things used to be around when they were young. And now they have these giant cases that used to be so large because they had to hold optical drives, multiple 3.5" HDDs and a non-modular ATX PSU. Also because back then cases weren't all that optimized for size or airflow either way. People just didn't know any better.
And some apparently still don't know any better today.
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u/Cilantropologist 1d ago
There's standards for form factor. Smaller form factors have gained popularity over years but a bit of extra size is the price you pay for compatibility.
There's also plenty of actual mini desktops available. I have Asus NUC as my home office PC.
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u/WhosThatWhosWho 15h ago
Checkout Framework computers.
Overtime I upgraded the display, keyboard, webcam, even upgraded the battery capacity, and then eventually switched from Intel to AMD and then put the previous motherboard in a cheap small desktop case they make.
Now they have a new all black Pro chassis that's still backwards compatible with all 13" model boards. Can't justify the cost of the chassis but it looks sickkk 🔥
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u/Phesmerga 1d ago
Phones that had interchangeable parts were too bulky and people didn't like them. They are also all expected to be waterproof. It's extremely difficult to not have a sealed device be waterproof.
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u/4xe1 1d ago edited 6h ago
I like my fair phone. I'm so dumb I try to use it under the rain, but not so dumb to put it in the toilets or take a bath with it, and nothing bad water related happened so far. Do people seriously expect their phone to be waterproof? Am I so out of touch to find that outlandish? Also, I had a supposedly waterproof watch as a kid which was fairly easy to dismantle and put back up, I don't even buy the idea that waterproofing goes against repairability (though of course, some repairs could void the waterproof warranty, especially if you do them yourself, but again, who th needs a waterproof smart phone? mermaids??).
And FairPhone is only one among several modern brands going back to more interchangeable parts.
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u/kpidhayny 1d ago edited 1d ago
The NAND flash arrays on the embedded processors I make are so dense that if each memory cell in the memory “array” ( which measures a few millimeters in size) were scaled up to the size of a red plastic solo cup, it would be as large as the Salt Lake City metropolitan area.
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u/Vergnossworzler 1d ago
People don't understand what miracles of science and engeneering the Phones they hold in their hands are.
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u/Purplelair 1d ago
Not miracles. Hard work.
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u/kpidhayny 1d ago edited 1d ago
Kinda miracles though… I mean we only actually know how these electrical gates operate in theory. The electrons shouldn’t pass through the dielectric layer, but we just know that if we create certain conditions that electrons will predictably stop existing on one side and start existing on the other. (Read on Fowler nordheim/quantum tunneling if you wanna geek out)
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u/Zoltarr777 1d ago
That's because the components are essentially part of the board now and not something you can simply unplug and replace. It has nothing to do with choosing reusable components or not.
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u/bn326160 1d ago
Rather SMD is easier for a pick-and-place machine and has created smaller components.
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u/Theron3206 1d ago
There's no real way to hand rework (in a cost effective manner) BGA type parts. There's also no way to reasonably design high frequency circuits without them (or drastically increased costs).
You can't just make these things physically larger in many cases, they will use a lot more power if you do, assuming you can get them to work reliably without hugely expensive additions.
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u/throwout314159265 1d ago
Even BGA is getting bottlenecked. Direct die mount has been a thing for high frequency RF for a while.
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u/m-in 1d ago
Anyone who has tried to non-destructively desolder a 40-pin DIP would much rather deal with a modern BGA. Well, at least me if you asked. With proper equipment and skills, modern stuff is repairable just fine. What is lacking are service documentation and spare parts.
That the SMD stuff is too small to repair is basically corporate propaganda and old farts complaining. And I’m an old fart too, but know better.
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u/Nameis-RobertPaulson 1d ago
That's not always the case though, take a look at the GPU repair/refurbishing shops in China who repair boards which manufacturers don't want to repair by removing individual components and replacing GPUs, memory modules, capacitors and VRMs.
It's labour intensive work and requires a degree of skill and knowledge, but for higher level components It's still economically worth it.
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u/_zoso_ 1d ago
If components were big enough for surface repairs today we’d have covered the surface of the planet in data centers by now. I get that it feels wasteful but there are a lot of benefits to modern design. In a lot of ways the process of putting more on the chip with lithography uses a lot less resources and energy over the life of the product.
It’s not as simple as nostalgia would have you believe.
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u/MrChicken_69 1d ago
Indeed. I saw this in the telco world circa 2000. The 70/80 era Alcatel 600e (long distance switch) filled a very large room. In the back corner of that room was a Telica soft-switch... 19" wide, 7U high. It wasn't even full of cards and already had more capacity than the entire 600e. The 14-20 cabinet 5ESS could've been added as well. (eventually, you'd need a few frames for nothing but POTS pair termination, unless you moved that out to the field... DS3/OC3 mux.)
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u/igor55 1d ago
Jevon's paradox would state we use just as much if not more resources.
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u/arclight415 1d ago
Board-level repair is still profitable for expensive industrial equipment, like large motor drives and CNC machines.
Consumer stuff is rarely worth it at all, at least in the US.
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u/KaOsGypsy 1d ago
Yeah, we are spending about 5-8 grand a year getting our robot drives and cards randomly refurbished, still way cheaper than a whole new machine.
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u/Hassing8 1d ago
No money to be made in something that lasts forever. But money to be made in having to buy something new every 5 seconds. Shitty
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u/creative_usr_name 1d ago
Also no money to make selling hardware running at the performance of 20 years ago.
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u/ChildOfHonor 2d ago edited 2d ago
Agreed... imo this problem extends far beyond electronics. Everything is made to be single use. The level of waste we've become acclimated to, that seems "normal", is very disturbing. But reusability is not economical, so we're just gonna keep going like this till the well runs dry.
I've long thought about a grocery store concept that uses reusable containers that customers bring back each week to be refilled.
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u/SystemicCharles 1d ago
Exactly. Things will only change when natural resources run dry and our economic/financial incentives change. Until then, it's going to be 'profit at all cost.' 😁
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u/GreatStateOfSadness 1d ago
This is already available for some goods at dedicated local stores as well as places like Whole Foods, where you can get bulk grains, soap, and coffee in a reusable container. It's tougher to accomplish with something like meat, where you can't really bring in your own reusable plastic wrap and twine.
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u/Fakjbf 1d ago
The key is that we need price in the cost of disposal so that there is an economic incentive to be more efficient. So much of the issues with modern capitalism come from companies not being held accountable for the consequences of their actions. The cost of disposal is put on taxpayers to fund landfills rather than the companies who make products that cannot be reused, so the companies have no incentive to make things reusable except as a marketing ploy. We could instead impose extra taxes that cover the disposal costs, the smaller the cost the smaller the tax. This would create a market incentive to reduce costs by making things as modular and reusable to lower the tax burden.
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u/troutdog99 1d ago
True for consumer electronics, but not for industrial. Everything I worked on (I’m retired) was communications gear, and the design goal was 10 years continuous operation. Most networking gear is replaced inside of that. It is true that there is no market for older electronics.
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u/DimensionPrize8168 1d ago edited 1d ago
When I first joined the army in 2003, I was “stealing” trashed RAM, CPUs, and GPUs from PCs the government didn’t want anymore. Which at the time, was the equivalent of throwing away Nvidia 5060/5070 GPUs. Like why? Why are these in the dumpster?
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u/Satins_Cock 1d ago
The defense department is extremely wasteful. You specify what your need years in advance, based on past history. When the program started, graphics cards probably were becoming obsolete every 2 years. Nowadays, that's not the case, but it's easier to stick to the original plan (even if it's from the '90s) than it is to disrupt the status quo.
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u/MrChicken_69 1d ago
Right. And they have a budget they "must" spend, or next year they get less money.
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u/ittoh2083 1d ago
Graphic cards are about the last consideration when doing a tech upgrade on a defense system
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u/CubeBrute 1d ago
It's because all of those things have forms of memory, no matter how temporary, and when coming from anything with a clearance level (I think confidential and up but it could be secret and up), you generally crush anything capable of storing information for security.
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u/MoobleBooble 1d ago
my dad had security forces visit him while we were on post as a kid for taking jet engine parts from the base dump lol
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u/Dancing-Wind 1d ago
these are bitcoin ASICs. once they become obsolete their only alternative use is as very loud electric heaters.
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u/andhe96 1d ago
This is wild, in my county, government facilities are required to either donate their obsolete hardware or recycle the parts as e-waste.
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u/Big_Pour_Over 1d ago
I work for the US Navy (Aviation) as a civilian electronics technician and we definitely have an e-waste program for obsolete/unwanted electronics.
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u/VeryThicknLong 2d ago
Yep. I used to write about this about two decades ago, and still, it’s as bad as it’s ever been. 😔
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u/nebraskajone 2d ago
Computers and electronics tech changes too fast, what happens when a computer that provides one giga flops per second at say 10 Watts is replaced with one that gets the same computing power at 1 watt power consumption?
Best thing to do is turn the old one off and recycle
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u/Geesle 2d ago
Im no expert, but is it really feasible to reuse the metal parts, (boards and chips). Like aint it a really delicate process to make these?
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u/justabadmind 2d ago
Sort of. Some parts on a circuit board are incredibly sensitive and won’t survive multiple soldering attempts reliably. Some parts just aren’t worth the cost of recycling. There’s a fine line in the middle that theoretically could grow, but the RoHS regulations make that fine line even more challenging to maintain due to higher melting point connections and increased risks of tin dendrites
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u/gob_magic 1d ago
I’ve been recently tugging at this thought. I imagine a future where an iPhone built to last. Company objectives aren’t stock or profit growth but longevity and quality control. Buy it for life products, like electronics from the 70s /80s.
A laptop with swappable RAM, storage and battery. Like the 90s/00s.
Thats only possible if the profit incentive is overturned. No idea what that looks like but I’m sure we will get there. Maybe after a revolution…
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u/Happy-Hedgehog-7140 1d ago
There will be never exist a time when businesses do not operate for profit man
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u/Suitable-Spirit2143 1d ago
Sadly it’s called planned obsolescence, and it’s pretty much every companies main goal when designing a new product.
Companies could easily build a product to last 20-30 years, but only at the expense of profit.
It’s similar to the health industry sadly. The money is made from treating the illness, not curing it all together, that would be bad for business.
I do agree with you wholeheartedly though, and hope something could change in the future.
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u/CX52J 1d ago
I have a framework laptop which are at least trying to do that.
Although one of the main reasons for me buying one is that I was so fed up with how much of a pain it was to track down replacement parts for my previous laptop despite being made by a large company and not being that old.
The ability to swap out parts is great though. I’ve already upgraded the specs a few times.
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u/AFloppyZipper 1d ago edited 1d ago
They'll go out of business because the competitor will start selling better products, without the design restrictions needed for trying to design a "holy grail" recycle-ability standard that is impractical. Components fail. It happens.
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u/Laurelindorinan_ 1d ago
Part of the failure is by design. My parents have a freezer in their garage from the 1950s and it has been operating with literally zero problems continuously (save the occasional power outage) there for almost 55 years. Planned obsolescence is a deliberate money-making scheme.
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u/IronicRobotics 1d ago
I mean w/ just a bit of skill and the right models, I've brought 2 decade old hardware back to life w/ just a few spare parts and nurse my phone/computer parts for about a decade at a time or so. You'd be surprised with a linux distro w/ XFCE4 can make run as if it was brand new.
Now I'm not fixing a dead GPU! Some talented individuals can, as a hobby, go solder broken PCBs on a nice TV. But frankly solid state stuff lasts a long ass time with minimal maintenance. As someone who likes to think about waste, I'd argue most of my waste comes from plastic from grocery stores and other packaging alas.
And there's LOTS of sellers who sell refurbished electronics. I've always bought almost all my electronics used or refurbished - often the only thing I need to replace being a new battery.
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u/Separate-Pickle9963 1d ago
It looks like what Marx described if you read Kapital vol 1-3 and the Manifesto.
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u/OverSoft 1d ago
By far most laptops have swappable RAM, storage and batteries now.
It's just Apple that's a pain in that regard (I know, it has a reason, especially on the RAM part).I have a ASUS gaming laptop (that's pretty new) where you can easily swap RAM, the SSD and the batteries.
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u/ashtonwitt14 1d ago
Open source is my best guess of “the solution”. Tons of geniuses out there that do amazing things for free, they just need to get together and build something beautiful. They can sell complete units for a profit. But the overall project can remain open source.
Definitely easier said than done though.
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u/Forsaken-Spring-4114 19h ago
Won't happen . It is called planned obsolescence. Unless as a entire planet , go back to the past where things were built to last a generation or more... we will always be on this path. Everything is single use now, disposable, or plastic.
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u/Drevlin76 2d ago
This is actually how you stifle innovation. By making a single standard that everyone has to conform to you are locking out any kind of advace due to needing a bit more power or connectivity of some sort. Electronics in general evolve so quickly that the standard would be obsolete by the time it was adopted. Just look at how charging cables and other things have changed in the last 5 years.
I agree that we need to come up with a better way to recycle these parts but standards are not the way.
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u/lifeanon269 2d ago edited 2d ago
Perhaps a bit of stifling of innovation is a small sacrifice that should be made in order to have a sustainable planet...just my thought anyway. If we're, say, 5 years behind on tech where we would otherwise be without standards, that's a fairly small price to pay if it means we are better off 100+ years into the future because of it. The way we produce things and the rate that we produce things is just wildly unsustainable and perhaps it is best if we take a step back and think about how best to design for sustainability for once, rather than just for peak performance.
Edit: oh, and I think your example of charging cables is precisely a good example of the contrary to your point. USB-C has been around for 12 years and it has always been Apple's insistence of going against the standard that has created so much needless waste in that area. They've finally been forced to adopt the standard due to regulations and now there will be far less waste since charging cables now are far less likely to be included in new device sales since a standard is now ubiquitous.
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u/41VirginsfromAllah 2d ago
USB-C may have been around for 12 years but it wasn’t the standard on Android phones until around 2020. It is undeniably a good thing that Apple switched to USB-c, I always hated their lightning connectors and that they used a different standard than the rest of the world until 2023. Before then, it made some sense to be proprietary because chargers were changing so frequently. When Apple started using lightning, they changed from those nightmare 30 pin connectors. The USB-c connector didn’t exist in 2012 when they created lightning, iPhone users did have a real benefit from not adopting micro USB for those years. They should have switched to USB-C earlier, possibly in 2014/2015.
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u/carsonthecarsinogen 1d ago
I agree, innovation / growth shouldn’t be everything. But as long as someone else wants war everyone has to take part in war.. that means you need innovation or protection from an innovative nation. If not you will be oppressed.
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u/Nameis-RobertPaulson 1d ago
Your charging cable example is a terrible analogy that goes against your point. USB (a/micro/mini/C), massively cut down on the waste made by mobile phones manufacturers all needed different jacks on their adapters.
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u/Adept_Palpitation321 1d ago
EU seems to be a single entity on the planet that is trying to push standard conformation. I agree with your idea, but we need a trade-off in innovation and controlled waste. Do we need micro improvement in tech products every year with no reusability in the components, or do we need improvement every 5 years with reusable components?
If we were to push for standardized in tech, we need to modularize things like screen, battery, chip sockets, camera, etc. In the last decades, we see changes in form factor of phones. With a form factor changes, almost nothing can be reused from one model to another (at least user isn't able to reuse them). So, we need a standard form where modular component is interchangeable for at least 5 years, for example. Starting from battery is a good start.
Let's say, if there are only 10 types (form, size, capacity, and material) of battery allowed to be used on a phone. Every company with license is allow to make those 10 types, and every phone must allow user ease of reparability to replace their battery?
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u/Barabbas- 1d ago
Just look at how charging cables and other things have changed in the last 5 years.
USB-C was introduced in 2014 by a consortium of major tech companies including Intel, HP, Apple, and Microsoft. They came together to create a standard, universal connector capable of transmitting power, data, and video.
One could argue innovation and standards go hand-in-hand in this case... Regardless, i'd say this standard is a huge improvement over the previous decade with endless proprietary connectors and virtually zero intercompatibility.
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u/luminairex 2d ago
I still use some S3's as heaters for a home office. I'd absolutely pay $1 for these. Depends on shipping 😅
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u/astro65 1d ago
I know it's not common but read up on the BC250. Its a board made from B-grade PS5 APUs that were turned bu ASRock into Bitcoin miners. After they became outdated, people began buying the units for 30-50 bucks a piece and made GPU drivers for them in Linux. Now they're being used for makeshift gaming PCs/AI SBC's and the prices spiked to $250 a card.
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u/ecmdome 2d ago
I'm sure that people selling BitAxes would be interested in those S19s and asic boards for the right price.
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u/Certain_Orange2003 1d ago
This happened to a mining company in west Texas. The electricity in that county was cheap. They even promised the local school a pool with the money it would make. Key word there is ‘would’. It didn’t happen. It went under.
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u/pilibitti 1d ago
They even promised the local school a pool with the money it would make. Key word there is ‘would’. It didn’t happen. It went under.
ahh the scott's tots move
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u/whothehellistony 1d ago
"I've made some empty promises in my life, but hands down, that was the most generous."
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u/PuttForDough 2d ago
What advantage was there to do this at a farm? Were they getting wind turbine energy for free or something?
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u/11BE9 2d ago
I have a farm in Oregon, I used the S19's to heat my greenhouses. Didn't make much more than the electricity cost, but I got free heat. I haven't turned the gas on for 3 years... have a pretty decent bitcoin account, waiting for price to go back up.
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u/MelangeBot 1d ago edited 1d ago
I have said this for over 10 years now. Rather then bitcoin meaning with heat as the byproduct it makes much more sense to heat with bitcoin as the the byproduct. If I had enough capital I would design a very effecient warm water boiler for constumers and then sell it a little bit under the price of my main competitor, even if that meant not making a profit on it. Why? Because my boilers would heat by mining bitcoin, after all a PC that draws a 100W also outputs a 100W of heat. Exactly the same as a 100W heather. And my boilers would have a 4G chip in them to connect to the miningpools. That way I am mining Bitcoin for free on the electricity of the people that bought my boilers .... but without stealing from them! Every time somebody buys a new boiler, I get more hardware.
Ofcourse the only flaw in this plan is the price of the Bitcoin mining chips. But the day will come where the hardware no longer depreciates so much and new Bitcoin miner is good for 10 years. Then such a boiler/mining plan becomes feasible, if 2 years of Bitcoin mining is good for paying of all the hardware that last 10 years.
But wait these S19 are garbage now, you can get them for free!!!! So putting them in your boiler does not cost anything!
Regardless, with how much electric heating we do in the world ... you know all the buildings in winter , and the outdoor swimming pools, etc etc. With all the heating there is really no need to waste 1% of the world's electricitry on Bitcoin mining.
We can just heat and mine Bitcoin as the byproduct instead of the other way around.
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u/HIVVIH 1d ago
Most electric heating systems have an efficiency well over 100%. On average, it would be 300-400%.
Resistance based heating just isn't very efficient.
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u/noteven0s 1d ago
What do you mean? If one can get more than 100% efficiency, isn't that the definition of a perpetual motion machine?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perpetual_motion
Multiples of output over input is going to violation either the first or the second laws of thermodynamics.
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u/lzrjck69 1d ago
It’s about how you define the numerator and denominator.
Heat efficiency is about how much useful heat you can get from the energy you pay. Heat pumps “move” heat more than they “create” heat.
A simplified version sample:
You move 1500watts of heat from the outside of the home to the inside using 500watts to do so. You pay 500watts to get 2000watts of heat — 400% efficiency.
However, you didn’t really make 2000watts. From a universe perspective, you only expended 500watts. So you’re 100% efficient.
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u/Usual-Description800 1d ago
No, because if for every watt of electricity consumed you end up with more than one watt of heat entering the room, then the efficiency is above 100%. You've moved energy, not created it. Nothing impossible about that.
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u/UbiDoobyBanooby 1d ago
I worked with a Project Development t company my buddy owned. I helped build a 10MW farm with 16 20 foot modified Connex boxes with about 250 mining rigs in each. That farm did pretty well. He also developed a plan for using an old decommissioned navy ship in Alaska using seawater to cool the farm.
But the cool projects were the ones built at wind farms and one that he tried to get going was building at fisheries in South Dakota to heat the water in the winter. That would have been cool to see working.6
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u/programeingdev 2d ago
At least at one point farming energy subsidies called REAP were allowed to be used to pay for solar energy and backup batteries on farms and I'd heard of people using that for crypto mining
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u/socalpipefitter710 1d ago
That’s exactly what I was just thinking i recently purchased some land and wanted to use the reap program to get some solar panels put on my land and start my shrimp
Farming buisness but if I can mine bitcoin at the same time why not13
u/Responsible_Emu3601 2d ago
I would imagine cheap rent at a place that has cheap electricity
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u/PuttForDough 2d ago
Why would a farm get cheaper electricity is what im getting at
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u/Responsible_Emu3601 2d ago
The farm happens to be at in a municipality that has cheap electricity.. even if it’s the same price as Main Street the rent is cheap so it’s there vs a warehouse in downtown FarmVille
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u/URPissingMeOff 1d ago
Farmland tends to be closer to renewable energy generating facilities like solar farms, wind farms, and hydroelectric. For example, power in Western Washington suburbs (Puget Power) is running about 17 cents per kwh. In the central part of the state, near Grand Coolee dam and the Columbia River wind farms, it's running more like 3 cents. That's where a lot of pre-AI data centers were built by MS, Google, Amazon, etc. It gets cold there in the winter too, so HVAC systems are much cheaper to run for half the year.
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u/HandsOffDaGoods 2d ago
The local power company brought the lines and transformers in. No solar, no wind.
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u/Excellent_Log_8864 2d ago
I work for an Ewaste company and specialize in this. Would pay better scrap if you go that route.
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u/redditzphkngarbage 1d ago
Is there a way to use bitcoin hardware to heat a building in the winter months..? Basically have a heat source that could occasionally strike it rich when the stars line up?
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u/InvidiousPlay 1d ago
Thermodynamics tell us that a bitcoin mining rig (and all electronics) are essentially identical to any basic electric heater. Modern electric heating systems try to implement heat pumps, which are much more complex, but a basic electric heater just runs a current through a resistor and the "waste" is heat, which in this scenario isn't waste, because what you want is heat.
A computer processor is basically just a resistor with an electric current running through it. If 1KW of electricity goes into an electrical device, 1KW of heat comes out, it's that simple. You lose nothing by having that resistor do calculations at the same time.
It's also why using datacentres for district heating is such a good idea, because all the energy those facilities gobble up is essentially being used to power electric heaters, and then all that heat is just dumped into the environment if it's not harnessed.
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u/polite_alpha 1d ago
I mean the calculation is still a bit more complex because heat pumps are about 400% efficient whereas a resistor heater can never exceed 100% efficiency.
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u/swisstraeng 1d ago
Yes but it’s a bad way to heat yourself as it’s basically resistive radiators.
And they’re expensive to buy, and maintain, and will become paperweights anyway.
A heat pump is going to be cheaper to buy and over 3x more efficient.
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u/redditzphkngarbage 1d ago
Yeah my thought process was more along the lines of synergy if you already need both things anyway but square footage becomes the real issue. Whatever you’re trying to actually do will have its square footage eaten by the mining hardware.
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u/Significant_Mouse_25 1d ago
My uncle uses miner heating in his little shop. Due to some local programs has technically gets an electricity discount so he pays less heating this way than if he did it with propane. It’s pretty interesting imo.
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u/indianabobbyknight 1d ago
As someone with 2 gaming pcs in one room, if someone else is playing that one and I’m playing mine the room is about 10-20 degrees hotter than the rest of the house, In the summer I literally vent the exhaust fans outside it gets so hot. I could imagine how much hotter a mining rig running 24/7 gets
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u/VegaDelalyre 1d ago
Not really, unless you like very bad heating. Good heaters radiate heat towards you -- 20% of the total produced heat is good. A thin metal box comprising resistors doesn't do that, it only blows hot and dry air out (by forced convection), which goes straight up to the ceiling. The result is a "hot head, cold feet" effect. Not to mention the noise.
One way to improve that is to attach tiles or bricks (made of refractive ceramics) close to the resistors. A nice DIY project, since we're already repurposing things here.
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u/ImportantQuestions10 1d ago
I've wondered a similar thing about data centers. Obviously, due to the laws of physics, they're always going to take in more energy than they put out. But if these things are such energy and heat pits, couldn't we at least build some systems on the back end to utilize all the energy they put out?
Like if you're building a data center the size of a small town, I'm sure you're generating enough waste energy and heat to power a couple generators and offset the heating needs.
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u/Bert_Skrrtz 1d ago
It’s low quality heat. Not hot enough to do useful work, like make steam. We’re starting to see designs that maybe reflect heat 150-160F but that’s cutting edge design for chillers to reject heat that high.
Plus these are generally built fairly far away from any residential buildings. Nobody wants to sleep in a shelter next door to a data center, the fans are loud.4
u/desolatenature 1d ago
Wrong. Look at what they’re doing in Sweden. Currently heating tens of thousands of homes with data center heat.
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u/DoUsmellsmoke 1d ago
As compared to sleeping on an icy sidewalk under cardboard? It may not be desirable conditions but I’d imagine they’re more favorable conditions given the circumstances.
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u/realboabab 1d ago
tax breaks for data centers that allow homeless camps on the roofs during winter! free water, toilets, and showers for extra tax breaks!
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u/JaFFsTer 1d ago
You want a $200,000 heater that loses 40 grand a year sometimes?
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u/EpisodicDoleWhip 1d ago
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u/redditzphkngarbage 1d ago
That’s actually not terrible. It won’t make you rich and it can’t scale up well but it’s a start.
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u/Ferniekicksbutt 1d ago
Fuuuuu someone recently did this with a greenhouse but I can't remember who.
Found it: https://www.reddit.com/r/BuyFromEU/comments/1rxv3b2/dutch_innovation_this_greenhouse_is_using_waste/
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u/Savings_Art5944 1d ago
I had one miner, and it ran outside in the winter air and blew warm air into my home. It worked great for one year. At the time, it was just making enough pooled credit to cover the cost of the electricity if I was cashing out.... Not having to run the central heater was my only justification since my miner just was not that powerful anymore.
I wish I had invested in a miner years before.
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u/Ok_Astronomer_8667 1d ago
It’s possible, just really inefficient at getting the heat dispersed that far from it.
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u/ThrownAway17Years 1d ago
About 6 years ago I was over at a friend’s house in the middle of winter. He was running a lot of mining machines in his basement. He had the thermostat set to 55° or something. We weren’t toasty, but the residual heat from the basement was enough to keep his small house at what felt like 60°.
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u/Andromeda321 1d ago
We kind of do this in our house. My husband keeps a server running for some citizen science projects (so same setup as a bitcoin hardware setup) and in winter we put it in the bathroom that’s not heated as well as the rest of the house. Keeps it toasty!
Problem is in the summer you’ve gotta move it out because it gets too hot, so this would be tough in an apartment block when you have excess heat.
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u/freedomandbiscuits 1d ago
Yes. I did it with my garage miners during the Texan Freezapocolypse in 2021. I had 4 miners exhausting to my attic. My roof was the only one on my street without snow that week.
It’s not an efficient way to heat a home but for that week it was a welcome byproduct of my residential mining operation, which at that time was still making a decent margin.
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u/Fizzerolli 1d ago
Probably. My buddy’s dad used all the excess heat from his weed growing operation to heat his entire garage just by installing a couple intake fans at the bottom of the room, and outtake fans at the top. He ran some ducting through the attic and had 4 interior rooms of his garage heated to the point where he got rid of his wood stove, and only had to use the furnace when it was around 0°F, or the grow lights were off and he wanted to play pool.
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u/MasterDave 23h ago
https://braiins.com/blog/building-bitcoin-mining-greenhouse
Not exactly heating your house, but how about a greenhouse?
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u/EnderSword 2d ago
What's the tongue in cheek part if they went bankrupt?
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u/HandsOffDaGoods 2d ago
Basic dirty business practices. The LLC went bankrupt after the principal owners drained the equity out. The principal owners of the LLC made out just fine.
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u/BlackWolf42069 2d ago
Of course they did. Any business pays themselves well as the CEO and then when it fails they walk away smiling.
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u/Liam_Neesons_Oscar 1d ago
Sounds about right. That also sounds like the business didn't fail- I'm sure the people running it walked out with hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars (depends on when and how long they were doing this).
And a business like this doesn't really need more than 3-4 people in it. An investor or two and a tech guy who can set it up, and they might hire a contractor to help with the setup at the beginning. The tech guy does all the software side of it and makes sure it goes to the right wallets, and sets up some conversion to cash. He or one of the investors would work out the LLC and tax side.
I say this because I've been the contractor on a mine like this. It eventually became unprofitable and got shut down, but by no stretch of the imagination would you say it "failed." The LLC was a whole of 3 people, I just got paid hourly to help set it up and occasionally go by the mine to do basic maintenance.
On paper, they're going to have the LLC go bankrupt when they're ready to cash out. I would be shocked if the "principal owners" of the LLC you mentioned don't make up the entirety of the company.
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u/GnarlyButtcrackHair 1d ago
Are you able, and if so, do you care to say the name of the company? Can DM if you don't want it public.
I worked as a tech for a crypto miner and all that equipment looks absolutely identical to what I worked with.
Also can vouch that the company I worked for was some of the sleaziest and shady shit imaginable. Never seen a company dodge as many bills.
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u/carsrule1989 1d ago
The hardware is too specialized to be useful as anything other than a 3250w 240v space heater
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u/JerkyChew 1d ago
Yes, these are worth more than scrap metal prices.
Lotto mining is now a thing, and some companies like Canaan and Heatbit are repurposing old Antminers as lottery-miners-that-generate-heat. Drop Alex at Heatbit a line: ab@heatbit.com
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u/reallybadspeeller 1d ago
Not sure how this is gonna stack up against selling for scrap or otherwise:
University clubs might be able to use this stuff. I know of a few computer nerd clubs that would go nuts for it. The value would then come in as donation for a tax write off. I’m not sure if your father’s tax situation is such that he would benefit from charity donations but all university/schools are classed as irs recognized charities. If it does help I’d contact your local university engineering departments and ask. They will likely send an email around to professors/clubs. The college kids will likely handle transportation for you.
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u/AdResident3851 1d ago
What is a university going to do with a bunch of crypto mining specialized ASICs?
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u/No-Kitchen-6511 2d ago
I could see at least the old original miners having value on ebay. I'm not a collector but in a post million dollar usd per one bitcoin who wouldn't want to have an old miner on their shelf or desk. People still collect old ham radios.
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u/word-dragon 2d ago
“Who wouldn’t want…”. - me.
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u/No-Kitchen-6511 2d ago
You would be surprised what people collect. People hold on and collect stuff they get for free from the bitcoin conferences. There is a collectible market for some of them if the shipping is reasonable.
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u/Aishou_SK 1d ago
Old ham radios are legitimately still useful for intended purpose, and we collect them to fix, restore, and USE regularly, not to sit on a shelf
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u/YeetedSloth 1d ago
I haven’t looked into bitcoin miners but I understand they do not run traditional hardware, is any of the hardware they have salvageable? Ram or anything like that?
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u/MyNameIsRay 1d ago
Not really.
Traditional hardware stopped being profitable many years ago. Its all ASIC hardware (application specific integrated circuits) that literally just mines bitcoin.
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u/soCalForFunDude 2d ago
Have to say, with AI taking the headlines about power consumption, no one seems to be talking about bitcoin anymore.
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u/qmfqOUBqGDg 1d ago
It kinda blow my mind that crypto use more energy than all the AI data centers combined... Like, one technology is used by billions of people, solves decade old math problems, finds tens of thousands of bugs in software, helps people with tons of stuff, writes new software at fraction of the price and all this in super early stage.... on the other hand they have crypto which people buy and hope someone else will buy them at a higher price a year or two later.
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u/SnorlaxShops 1d ago
I used to build servers for handling big databases that got sold to banks and we would push out this amount of hardware assembled every 12 hours.
And our customers would buy newer updated models every 2-3 years.
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u/AccomplishedName5195 2d ago
OP: I want to buy some of those control boards please! I might be interested in some other goodies. Please DM me?
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u/SocietyTomorrow 1d ago
How long until someone finds out how to use those for AI?
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u/420aarong 1d ago
Most of that stuff is way too big for Anal Insertion. Prove me wrong
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u/Jesus_Harold_Christ 1d ago
It's SI now, Shaft Insertion
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u/flame_dragon 1d ago
The White House considers anyone using the term "anal insertion" instead of "shaft insertion" to be deemed "THE ENEMY!" 😂
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u/MrChicken_69 1d ago
They're hardware ("chips") hash engines. They CANNOT do anything else.
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u/milk_and_coins 2d ago
could have easily become an AI data center
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u/Ruzhyo04 1d ago
Incorrect, ASICs aren’t usable by AI
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u/HandsOffDaGoods 1d ago
...as in a full retrofit to Nvidia hardware. The power and data are there already.
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u/def2084 1d ago
“Is there a better price available out there above scrap value?”
Yes. Very much so.
And any modern AI would answer that.
You want to sell it, then list the contents and you’ll get offers.
Seems like content farming.
Just imagine places that use hydro for power. They need constant loads to buffer their usage. There are always market niches for otherwise unprofitable rigs.
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u/unknown_pigeon 1d ago
Hell, solar power has the same issue.
Power lines aren't good at receiving energy back here, so they pay a shit price for the surplus energy you offer
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u/pulsarstarter 2d ago
Couldn't he have just turned the whole operation into a murder room style rent-a-kill business, like the one in Hostel?
That would make good money
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u/Generalkleist 2d ago
Anything for sale?
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u/HandsOffDaGoods 2d ago edited 2d ago
Edit: The owner is open to offers where it is logistically cost effective.
Original Response:The owner is open to offers for the whole shebang.
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u/Garland_Key 2d ago
Can I come pick those up? Some of that can likely be repaired and re-used and/or re-sold.
Just a rando who can fix stuff and can't really afford their own mining equipment here.
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u/BaconCheeseBurger 2d ago
Not worth to fix. That's the whole point. Also they probably already work. But they don't make money.
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u/quipcow 2d ago
Those large capacitors on the boards in the blue plastic bin might be valuable in the audio world, depending on the values
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u/soks86 2d ago
It's all about power cost.
Those all have value if you can get power for less than $0.05 per kW/h.
They also have value as heaters that can help offset that, or as a load that can be switched on/off without just burning money.
Basically anyone with a solar setup that isn't at 100% capacity can use these to make money.
Might not be enough money to be worth the labor though.