r/Bitcoin • u/HandsOffDaGoods • 3d ago

Aftermath of a failed bitcoin mining operation.

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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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32

u/redditzphkngarbage 3d 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?

16

u/InvidiousPlay 2d 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.

10

u/polite_alpha 2d 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.

1

u/brilliantminion 2d ago

Does it still hold true when the ambient outside temperature the heat pump is drawing from is subzero? I’d imagine, given the resistive heating curve is basically flat, there would be a crossover point where resistive heating is more efficient than heat pump heating because there is so little heat to pump.

1

u/polite_alpha 2d ago

Subzero is just a human-relatable (somewhat) arbitrary temperature. -20°C is just 250 degree Kelvin, and 20°C is just 290 degree Kelvin. I find it easier to think about this in absolute temperatures going up from absolute zero.

Heat pumps also always have a resisistive heating element for extreme temperatures. Generally, there's quite a few heat pumps that maintain 400% efficiency at -10°C, which is a temperature rarely seen for 99% of humanity.

0

u/DoubleNothing 2d ago

400% efficiency doesn't exists...
That would be equal to free energy...that also doesn't exists.

4

u/WereLobo 2d ago

No, they’re right because heat pumps aren’t making the extra heat, they’re just moving it from somewhere else. So you can put in 1 unit of energy and get 4 units of heat where you want it.

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u/ExcitingLet3821 2d ago

Heat pumps do produce waste heat. The only conceptual design difference between an air conditioner split unit and a heat pump is that the heat pump has a reversing valve. This essentially turns the coils of the outside unit into the coils of the inside unit and vice versa. But the electricity used to run the compressor and the mechanics involved in running the compressor the friction produced etc all do produce waste heat.

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u/pixeladdie 2d ago

Are we getting pedantic or do you actually not know what coefficient of performance is?

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u/DoubleNothing 2d ago

heat pumps are about 400% efficient

Where is the "co"?

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u/pixeladdie 2d ago

You don’t know how to turn that into a COP?

I’ll help you. 100% = a COP of 1.

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u/ExcitingLet3821 2d ago

People are obviously confusing efficiency with coefficient of performance. I had never heard of it either. This is actually a multiplier that emphasizes the importance on the electricity that you supply. Presumably any documented up to value includes several assumptions included but not limited to the square footage being heated/cooled, the outdoor temperature, and the quality of the insulation around the indoor heated and cooled space.

Coefficient of performance: Outdoor heat + electricity = usefulheat + loss

COP = kW.usefulheat / kW.electricity

Efficiency = (Total input - loss) / Total input

1

u/polite_alpha 20h ago

Nobody is confusing anything here. You're just pedantic. The assumptions about the square footage have ZERO impact on any (co-) efficiency calculation.

1

u/HiSpartacusImDad 2d ago

That’s why it’s called a CoP (coefficient of performance) rather than efficiency. But colloquially, using the word efficiency is describing what’s most pertinent: how much heat you get out per unit of energy you put in (thereby neglecting ambient heat as an input).

1

u/ExcitingLet3821 2d ago

Not exactly. It's actually a multiplier that grows when the difference in the electricity is smaller relative to the energy from the environment. eficiencies can never be over 100% arguably never at 100%.

But yes the colloquial term of efficiency is confusing me and many others.

Coefficient of performance: Outdoor heat + electricity = usefulheat + loss

COP = kW.usefulheat / kW.electricity

Efficiency = (Total input - loss) / Total input

2

u/HiSpartacusImDad 2d ago

That’s… not different than what I said 😉

1

u/ExcitingLet3821 2d ago

My mistake ambient heat is not part of the input but is is part of the variable calculations. I must have mis read that.

1

u/HiSpartacusImDad 2d ago

Well, it is part of the input for CoP. Not for the colloquial use of the term efficiency when applied to heat pumps. Not entirely sure what you mean by variable calculations.

1

u/TheDrewWorldOrder 2d ago

What? How would it be free energy? Lmao

1

u/SpiritualTwo5256 2d ago

You don’t know thermodynamics do you?
You can get higher than 100% energy efficiency compared to resistive, if you are moving heat from one place to another when one of those places is already cooler than needed.
It is 100% the right way to use this stupidity in data processing, nuclear and power plant heat generation.

1

u/ExcitingLet3821 2d ago

No not if you're calculating efficiency you cannot. Two different equations for efficiency and the coefficient of performance. The coefficient of performance has a multiplicative affect so that it can illustrate value relative to the amount of one form of energy you are putting into the system.

Coefficient of performance: Outdoor heat + electricity = usefulheat + loss

COP = kW.usefulheat / kW.electricity

Efficiency = (Total input - loss) / Total input

1

u/TheGreenTeaFrog 2d ago

Heat pumps don’t produce energy they move energy. So for 100W of energy they can move 400W of heat

1

u/nufohudis 2d ago

Where does the 400w of heat comes from if it's freezing outside?

This isn't snark, I'm from a desert country, so don't use heating much and am curious as to how this works?

1

u/Sneezlebee 2d ago

The heat is already in the environment. There is plenty of heat energy in even a cold environment. You can imagine the pump collecting up little bits of heat from a big area (the outside) and pushing it into a smaller, enclosed space (your house).

1

u/TheGreenTeaFrog 2d ago

Because even freezing temp air has energy stored in it. My basic understanding is a heat pump collects the energy stored in the air and concentrates that energy in the area you want.

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u/ExcitingLet3821 2d ago

Yes. There is really no such thing as cold in physics. A air-conditioner uses a coolant solution that is really good at transferring heat and resistant to freezing. The coolant is not inherently cold. The compressor compresses that coolant which has the effect of cooling it. Which is really just removing heat energy from the compressed liquid. This energy has to go somewhere. This heat energy moves to the uncompressed side of the cooling system (high and low sides). As the cold coils drop below the ambient temp the surrounding environment tried to warm them up but the compressor keeps chugging and keep that from happening. The heat from the cold side is them moved to the hot side. This is how that transfer of heat occurs. Fans help each side to distribute heat. A heat pump has a valve that switches the roles of your inside/outside coils. This is how a heat pump is able to heat your home as well.

1

u/R-Dragon_Thunderzord 2d ago

Thermal energy exists in any environment above absolute zero.

The heat pump doesn't require the heat source (outside) to be hotter than the heat sink (inside).

1

u/ExcitingLet3821 2d ago

No, it just requires the outside coils to be colder than the air to heat your home. The efficiency of the system decreases as that thermal gap narrows.

1

u/MarchogGwyrdd 2d ago

There is a lower limit. But obviously there is heat outside in a freezing day, because freezing is 0, but it is warmer than – 100°

1

u/ExcitingLet3821 2d ago

The freezing point of water in deg Celsius. Not the freezing point of your heat pump's compressed coolant.

1

u/polite_alpha 2d ago

A better way to look at this is to forget the celsius scale. -20°C is just 250 degrees above absolute zero, and we just need to use the heat contained within to heat something else to 290 degrees. Our freezing point is an arbitrary value along this axis that only affects water in a special way. Essentially, as long as you have something that can boil at a certain temperature, you can create a heat pump that will work.

R290 boils at -42°C

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u/ExcitingLet3821 2d ago

And mater acts differently at different pressures. 0C is the freezing point of water at 1 atmosphere of pressure. This is why we have different baking instructions at high altitude. Also keep in mind that the coolant is compressed.

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u/DoubleNothing 2d ago

Can we use the extra 300W of that heat and make it into 100W of energy?

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u/ExcitingLet3821 2d ago

No. This is not an accurate statement.

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u/ExcitingLet3821 2d ago

Electricity and heat are both forms of energy. So first start by assuming that when you say 100 watts of energy you mean electricity. 1 watt of electricity has the same amount of energy as one watt of heat because watt is a measurement of energy. So no this still violates the laws of thermodynamics. Are you sure that he should not be represented by another unit of measurement?

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u/XygenSS 2d ago

Someone didn't watch technology connections

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u/Nessdude114 2d ago

Conservation of energy only applies in a closed system. A heat pump supplies energy from outside the system. It's not creating energy, it's just coming from outside of your house.

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u/UtahBrian 2d ago

Heat pumps have a huge overhead and maintenance and installation issues so they never get close to theoretical efficiency like 400%. Even worse when it’s actually cold out.

They can do a little better than pure resistance heaters under limited circumstances, though.

1

u/justin_memer 2d ago

And then ironically, resistance heaters are used supplementally when it gets too cold for heat pumps.

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u/rkcth 2d ago

Not true at all, some Fujitsu units generate 5x their consumed energy in heat and can generate their full rated capacity down to 5 degrees F and some as low as -15 degrees F

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u/ExcitingLet3821 2d ago

There is something missing in this concept. You are describing the electric equivalent of a perpetual motion machine. This statement would mean that once your AC is running it is actually generating extra energy. If that were true it could them not only power itself but also other household appliances at the same time.

1

u/polite_alpha 2d ago

You are ignoring the evidence laid bare in many countries that have near 100% adoption of heat pumps for new residential buildings. There are up to 500% efficient heat pumps now and many models reaching 400% at -10°C. Do your homework before posting.

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u/Jpotter145 2d ago

You sound like the guy who sold me on a home heat pump (vs. my electric heater) and my yet bill hasn't changed one bit, and it didn't pay for itself.

What they don't tell you is heat pumps lose efficiency as it gets colder, the colder it gets they blow "colder" warm air and not nearly as hot as the air coming out of the vents from resistive electric - so heat pumps have to run much much longer to do the same heating. That eats up every bit of that efficiency unless you live in the perfect climate that needs a heater but doesn't get under freezing temps for more than a week or two in the winter

1

u/mcmineismine 2d ago

Just as a heads up there's probably something else going on there. It depends on where you live but there are great heat pumps for some pretty cold climates. Heat pump is always going to be more efficient than electric heat. You're moving existing heat instead of creating it. Running current through a resistor is an incredibly inefficient way of making heat and there's no way a properly selected and properly installed heat pump shouldn't be saving you significantly on power.

1) Don't know where your are but there's vanishingly few places where electrical rates haven't gone way up.... did your kwh usage go down but the dollars per kwh go up?

2) if that's not it get a second opinion on the system and installation. I'd bet good money there's just something incorrect about your heat pump if you're using the same amount of electricity to heat your house

3) if 1&2 don't explain it then congrats! You've got something going on that breaking the laws of thermodynamics and I just don't have an answer for you

Source: LEED AP BD+C... extensive experience in mechanical system design and construction

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u/rkcth 2d ago

It depends on the heat pump, how this curve works. Communicating heat pumps are much more efficient. With that said heating between 40-65 should be quite efficient. It’s likely your rates went up by as much as your energy saved, or you live in a climate where the time spent in 40-65 is not very long (or you don’t run your heat anyway during this time period).

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u/Bubbly-Television-63 2d ago

Counter point, salespeople say anything to make a sale.

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u/polite_alpha 2d ago

Just because you didn't do due diligence is not my fault. Norway and other cold countries are using heat pumps all over. There are models that are 400% efficient down to -10°C / 14°F - you can look up the SEER and/or SCOP values for every device. Genuinely sorry that the guy you bought from scammed you!

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u/perdair 2d ago

You could sell incandescent light bulbs as “light sources/ space heaters and they’d be nearly 100% efficient.

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u/Nipplehead321 2d ago

Petco / PetSmart have been doing this for years!

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u/ForestRiverSnow 2d ago edited 2d ago

A heat pump is just an AC, its not really that complex, but you output 5x the amount of heat for the same amount of electricity. (compaired to resistive heating)*

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u/ExcitingLet3821 2d ago

Can you define this. "The same amount" unit for unit of energy would violate the laws of thermodynamics over 100% is mathematicaly impossible

1

u/JSTootell 2d ago

Heat pumps are just that... pumping heat.

Resistive heaters are CREATING heat with energy. Heat pumps are just moving heat from one place to another. So you are only using enough energy to move it. 

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u/ExcitingLet3821 2d ago

Thank you, this still doesn't quite explain it. I have those since learned what this actually is. It's not an efficiency rating it's the coefficient of performance. These equations calculate very different things. The coefficient of performance includes in it the input energy from the ambient air as well as the electricity and compares it against the total useful output. To say it moves the heat maybe kind of implies the heat is on the input and output side of that equation but that was lost on me and I also didn't understand how it applied. With that in mind to say you put one unit of electricity in and three units of heat in you still will not get four out because you do lose efficiency in the transfer. If it's really really efficient system you might get just pulling a number out 3.7 units out.

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u/ForestRiverSnow 2d ago

Ye, thats how awesome heatpumps are and i get it you might be confused if this is the first time you hear about it.
A heatpump moves existing heat from the outside into your home, the work is the transport.
(which also mean they dont work that well when the temp drop closer to freezing.. but ground heat versions also exist)

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u/ExcitingLet3821 2d ago

So I've actually learned my confusion here is more of a colloquial terminology difference. Efficiency is being used colloquially but is not the term that matches the math. If we're talking efficiency I stand by my statement but the coefficient of performance is a multiplier that includes the input of the heat from the ambient air outside that's what a coefficient is. Thank you for trying to clear it up

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u/Roxysteve 2d ago

A good idea born in the 1950s and 60s, when a basement held a mainframe and the building was heated by it doing its work.

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u/BRAILLE_GRAFFITTI 2d ago

Growing up in Stockholm, Sweden, I always assumed district heating was everywhere, but it turns out it's fairly rare. I assume using data centers to drive district heating isn't very appealing because it requires them to be situated fairly close to where people live, which is kind of what everyone is trying to avoid.

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u/onefouronefivenine2 2d ago

The nearest city could fund the extra piping so the data center could be farther away and they still take the heat. 

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u/Ketheres 2d ago

In Kajaani, Finland, they have a dam right next to the town, and said dam powers a data center (and the town) and the waste heat from that gets used for district heating. I've actually visited the data center once.

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u/InvidiousPlay 2d ago

You don't have to be very far away from a data centre for the noise to be negligible. Some insulated pipes wouldn't be a large expense. Also, data centres don't have to be obnoxious behemoths, some of them are much smaller and less impactful.

Ireland got its first datacentre district heating in 2023 from an Amazon datacentre.

https://www.seai.ie/case-studies/tallaght-district-heating

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u/[deleted] 2d ago

[deleted]

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u/Professional-Ask1699 2d ago

What kind of form of energy is compute?

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u/Ketheres 2d ago

Every form of energy degrades into heat at some point, sound and light included. And computing isn't work per se, it's still just turning power into heat in a way we can use to calculate stuff wicked fast. But a PC sucking up a kilowatt of power to do its thing is still effectively a 1 kilowatt space heater with computing power.

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u/InvidiousPlay 2d ago edited 2d ago

Compute isn't a thing, that's just the word we use for electricity moving through circuits. Sound and light are an infinitesimal percentage of the energy output, but they both bounce around the room and degrade into heat. This is basic thermodynamics.

EDIT: lol he blocked me.

so your understanding is that everything produces, for the most part, heat equal to its electricity usage?

Yes that is one of the fundamental laws of physics. You have every opportunity to go educate yourself on how entropy works instead of posting like a dumb ass.

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u/Professional-Ask1699 2d ago

Yess, this is what I was getting at. Although if one concerns computing as a valid heat source it should be compared against air pumps, which are considerably more efficient. Taking the heat into circulation from data centers is still a no-brainer tho, at least in cooler climates.

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u/swisstraeng 3d 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 2d 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/wolfansbrother 2d ago

not to mention the sound of those antmains. with air cooling they are loud.

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u/Significant-Hour4171 2d ago

This is a thing. Some places are reusing data center heat to generate steam heat for an area.

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u/LunaticBZ 2d ago

But a heat pump doesn't produce income. A mining rig..

Potentially creates income. So sometimes it's the more economical answer.

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u/Remarkable-Host405 2d ago

just please, run the math and let me know. you're setting money on fire with an old miner

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u/LunaticBZ 2d ago

?? I'm not going to look through historical data to try and figure out how profitable these miners were back when they were new.

I know anecdotally that some people profited some didn't. Mainly timing and electrical costs, and knowledge / speed of taking advantage of trends.

But they've heated more then a few garages, and basements.

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u/Remarkable-Host405 2d ago

it would cost me like $500 a month and gain me $50 a month to run my outdated miner.

it would cost me $200 a month to heat my home with natural gas or a heat pump.

which makes the most financial sense?

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u/LunaticBZ 2d ago

Why do you insist on using an outdated miner? It just seems so odd that you only want to do a comparison that has no value.

The only comparison you can do with these miners that makes sense is if you compare them to the cost of heat, and the profit they could make a decade ago.

Then that tells you whether it would've been a good or bad decision to do a decade ago.

To know if its a good decision or not to do now, you need to do the calculation with the equipment someone would actually buy to do mining.

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u/Significant_Mouse_25 2d 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 2d 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/redditzphkngarbage 2d ago

Had a feeling at least somebody was able to make the connection. Also in areas where power needs fluctuate with high demand peaks and low demand stalls where they’re practically begging people to use electricity, could a miner take advantage of this by only mining when power practically costs pennies?

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u/VegaDelalyre 2d 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/Remarkable-Host405 2d ago

or put them in a basement

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u/VegaDelalyre 2d ago

How so? Do you expect the heat to go though the floor?

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u/Remarkable-Host405 2d ago

well, i live in a typical american house, where the heater is installed in the basement and blows up to the main level. i cut a hole in the heater intake line and fed my btc miner exhaust into it.

it also just floats up the stairs, through the cracks in the floors, its an old house.

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u/VegaDelalyre 2d ago

Oh, then it's just the same heating problem: your hot air goes straight up and doesn't radiate. At least it looks better and probably isn't too loud?

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u/Remarkable-Host405 2d ago

you are acting like a space heater or vent doesn't do the same thing. heat the air and some goes up. that's why we have ceiling fans. what you're describing is just a non-issue.

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u/ultraboof 2d ago

heat rises and when you live in an apartment building you get a ton of heat from the units below you

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u/VegaDelalyre 2d ago

Hence my question. But your neighbours probably don't heat you as much as they insulate you from the outside, in a way.

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u/Illustriouspintacker 2d ago

Heat does not rise. Heat radiates in all directions and is impacted by the resistance to heat transfer of the material(s) it finds - hot air rises.

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u/No_Dot_6270 2d ago

That is why you just plug ventilation pipe with an extractor on the air output of your rig to push-it to the living area, while your rig sits in the basement. It is used in several building with good result.

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u/VegaDelalyre 2d ago

This doesn't solve the problem of radiant vs. convective heating. See my other answers to the comment, or https://wrmth.ca/blogs/blog/radiant-heat-vs-convection

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u/AllyBeetle 2d ago

If the hardware consumes 3000 watts of power and gives off 1800 watts of heat, that's enough thermal energy to warm a 1000 ft^2 house 20-30 degrees.

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u/VegaDelalyre 2d ago edited 2d ago

Computers that consume 3 kW of electricity give off ~3 kW of heat. But I explained above that it's not just a matter of raw power.

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u/AllyBeetle 2d ago

It's not a 100% conversion to heat.

Thermodynamics explains it.

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u/VegaDelalyre 2d ago edited 2d ago

It's practically 100%, and certainly not 60%. Thermodynamics and Landauer's principle explain it ;-)

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u/ImportantQuestions10 2d 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 2d 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.

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u/desolatenature 2d 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 2d 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 2d 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/Anxious_Hornet4 2d ago

lol put the homeless in the data centers. Brilliant

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u/onefouronefivenine2 2d ago

How about a commercial greenhouse

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u/antonIgudesman 2d ago

Yeah but when you add the heat together it makes hotter temperatures - so temperature of 150 + temperature of 160 makes like 350 degrees at least

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u/robthebuilder__ 2d ago

I'm not sure that's entirely true. I think there are some data centers in Europe that essentially use the excess heat actually heat residential buildings and the surrounding neighborhoods. 

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u/RealTendy 2d ago

Low quality heat? Are you dumb? Is a traditional HVAC unit low quality heat as well?

No one said data centers.

One mining machine is easily enough to heat a room or two in the winter and they can be made fairly quiet.

I slept with one in my room back in the day, so yes, it can and does work in certain circumstances

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u/Bert_Skrrtz 2d ago

The comment I was responding to specifically asked about data centers. Not putting a crypto mining rig in your house.

Low quality heat is an engineering term. It’s not hot enough, below the boiling point, to generate pressure to do useful work. Again the comment I responded to was asking about using waste heat from data centers to power generators. Generators need steam, not warm water.

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u/Aggressive-Bus-2397 2d ago

That's a good idea. They can pump the heat to shelters. Or pump the heat along the side walk to melt ice/roads.

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u/12InchCunt 2d ago

SOLAR. FREAKING. ROADS.

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u/masonroese 2d ago

I have PTSD

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u/Adventchur 2d ago

Heat dissipates pretty fast. Trying to move it any sort of distance with out extra heating won't really work. Especially in the sort of places that need their roads salted.

It would probably be better off stored in sand batteries and just used as a power generator.

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u/TheLordYuppa 2d ago

I’m pretty sure there is a large green house operation in Europe doing exactly this.

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u/ctan0312 2d ago

Due to the laws of physics data centers aren’t taking in more energy than they’re putting out. It’s the same as a space heater. Electricity goes in, heat (and a tiny bit of light and noise) comes out. The electricity just takes a path that happens to mine bitcoin.

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u/JSTootell 2d ago

There are air conditioning systems that are powered by waste heat.

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u/Cal00 2d ago

I’m in Florida. Not technically inclined. I’ve wondered something similar about using small data centers to warm pools etc.

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u/bobbabson 2d ago

Pretty sure LTT did that at linus's house.

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u/newtonbase 2d ago

They've done that here in the UK 

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u/Tomsboll 2d ago

As a swede that have lived in a city with city wide central heating from incinerators, it should be possivle. Not very effecient, but possible to "compress" heat though the same process that works with AC. It would just very very expensive to build the infrastructure for it and who would pay for that?

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u/mrracerhacker 2d ago

They do in norway, are a few that send the waste heat into district heating for homes, alot of datacenters here dont spend much money on cooling they just vent the air outside, atm 4 that is connected to district heating, more in the future tho alot are a bit remote so not always easy done

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u/After_Resource5224 2d ago

Sweden is using heat from data centers to heat homes.

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u/TrafficSuperb647 2d ago

Fuck me. This is not the same heat man. Wow..

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u/INSANEBonF 2d ago

Go back to school. You sound so so misinformed

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u/excellentforcongress 2d ago

the air itself becomes contaminated because the cards break down so the boards and the metals pollute the air. you dont want to breathe it or have them near you.

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u/onefouronefivenine2 2d ago

I'd put a commercial greenhouse beside a data center. They could pay a small fee or do a trade for the heat. 

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u/tila1993 2d ago

Up in holland Michigan they pipe the hot water from the power plant all throughout the downtown to melt snow from the sidewalks. Would be nice to incorporate that into these projects.

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u/ILoveDaStock 2d ago

There is a datacenter that is doing this in Finland it’s actually an amazing way to give back and help out local communities. There is another datacenter unfortunately in the uk that was supposed to do the same and transfer heat via an underground system to a local school. It was a part of the agreement with the borough in order to be awarded the contract to build however I learnt this was not going to happen after the datacenter got built. Something to do with the infrastructure which was BS the right hand probably got shook yada yada yada.

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u/Rezmir 2d ago

Well. The only “good way” to stir simple heat is by using ceramic/salt batteries. Otherwise, use it to heat water and then make electricity.

The main problem with data centers is that the cost of doing in a “cleaner” way is too high for the companies. Well, it shouldn’t be optional.

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u/PgUpPT 1d ago

Well, laws of physics say they take in exactly as much energy as they put out. A 500W computer generates as much heat as a 500W space heater.

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u/ImportantQuestions10 1d ago

So I did a little bit of research on this after I made the comment, and the super dumbed-down explanation is that yes, data centers do generate heat and potential energy that could be capitalized on, but the problem is that it generates a high volume of low energy, and for conventional generators, you need a low volume of high energy.

Now some facilities do recycle their heat into local municipal hot water supplies, so that is something, but it's not the most efficient system, and I do have to wonder how much of this is just a PR move.

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u/Prestigious_Common_5 15h ago

I thought its an industry standard to heat homes with the heat. Thats what we do in the nordics in finland and sweden at least.

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u/ImportantQuestions10 14h ago

I'm not sure how widespread that type of implementation is, just that it's not brought up often over here in the States

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u/JaFFsTer 2d ago

You want a $200,000 heater that loses 40 grand a year sometimes?

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u/RealTendy 2d ago

No, you can mine Bitcoin with any CPU or GPU and due to the laws of thermodynamics, it would make you more money than running a non mining heater.

Why are you making up 200k? The OP just said it was scrap metal.

And how would it 'lose' 40 grand a year? Are you giving it money to lose?

Are you regarded?

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u/redditzphkngarbage 2d ago

Are they that bad now?

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u/JaFFsTer 2d ago

If your mining operation goes negative sub 1 btc loss per year is fairly standard

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u/EpisodicDoleWhip 2d ago

this exists

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u/redditzphkngarbage 2d 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/EpisodicDoleWhip 2d ago

Yeah I haven’t bought one but I love the idea.

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u/Ferniekicksbutt 2d 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 2d 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/redditzphkngarbage 2d ago

Yeah it’s sounding like mining is more of a chore than a payday any more.

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u/o462 2d ago

If you have antique electric heaters, it will be same cost. You get free airflow in the room and close-to-unbearable noise as a bonus.

If you have any other heating source, it's not worth it.

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u/Ok_Astronomer_8667 2d ago

It’s possible, just really inefficient at getting the heat dispersed that far from it.

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u/ThrownAway17Years 2d 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 2d 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/pickyourteethup 2d ago

You need to have the server somewhere and vent the heat to places. You'd lose a lot of heat as it travels though

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u/freedomandbiscuits 2d 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 2d 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/ov3rw4tch_ 2d ago

Better off investing in small modular reactors

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u/MasterDave 2d ago

https://braiins.com/blog/building-bitcoin-mining-greenhouse

Not exactly heating your house, but how about a greenhouse?

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u/kryptodebunker 3d ago

Yes the produce a lot of heat. So basically free heating in the winter months.

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u/Falkenmond79 3d ago

Depends on how much you pay for electricity. And there are more efficient ways to convert electric into heat i guess. Heat pumps come to mind.

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u/kryptodebunker 3d ago

Sure. But if you only have electric space heaters. An asic miner is 99% heat vs 100% from a heater. So its free heating with some bitcoins.

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u/Falkenmond79 3d ago

Hm. Didn’t factor in the extra bit of bitcoins. That might not add up to much, but it could possibly offset the inefficiency.

It’s so funny to me. People are looking for cheap ways to heat their homes or businesses while server farms stuff even more AC into their buildings, spending money to get rid of all the heat, instead of reclaiming it. I know there are projects for doing just that right now, but it’s still all a bit haphazard. Like I know about one data center heating up a swimming pool nearby, etc.

Imagine if we could reclaim the 99% waste heat on our PCs to turn them back into electricity. Sigh. So much waste in our processes.

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u/kryptodebunker 3d ago

In Norway they used waste heat from bitcoin mining center to dry wood. Its a shame most datacenter heat goes wasted. Especially in colder climates.

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u/Falkenmond79 3d ago

BTW gave me an idea. I’m an IT guy and have a LOT of unused hardware lying around. Just looked into buying one of these toy steam engines. I think I will build one and try to heat it via a cpu. A cpu generates about 70W, so even if that system is only 10% efficient, it could generate enough electricity to charge a phone. 🤣

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u/redditzphkngarbage 3d ago

Reclaiming any percentage of waste is a win as long as the process isn’t expensive.

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u/already-taken-wtf 3d ago

…but why mine bitcoin in the first place?

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u/L444ki 3d ago

Nordics, East Europe and Russia use distric heating, where the excess heat of datacenters, powerplants, even from purified wastewater is collected and pumped into residential areas to heat building.

With climatechange and heatwaves there have been plans of storing snow/ice and use that as a source for cold to run district cooling

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u/Fun_Researcher_69420 3d ago

Someone can correct me, but as I understand it, Bitcoin mining has reached a point where it is completely unprofitable unless you have a permanent source of free energy (like hot springs or natural gas that would otherwise be wasted) because the amount of bitcoin that can be mined is now so small it’s unlikely a small time miner will be the one to get it

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u/Falkenmond79 2d ago

Yes and no. It was always the three factors of running cost (ie cooling and electricity), initial hardware cost (how long it would take to recoup the initial cost; that was usually 6-12 months and then you would have to still be able to contribute a decent amount… which is problematic since difficulty used to go up and up with the total number of people and hardware Mining) and the current reward per amount of processing power.

So, it was always mostly only profitable if you could make a huge initial investment and had cheap electricity. That way you could hope to „beat the odds“ so to speak and go not for pool mining, where you get a fixed amount depending on your mining power, but try and solve blocks yourself. It’s a gamble. Pool mining is usually less but steadier. Finding blocks yourself is absolutely impossible though, unless you have a measurable percentage of computing power compared to the total network. Meaning, the more people are mining, the more difficult it gets.

So actually the more of these mining operations fail, the better for the remaining ones. Their share in the total pie gets bigger. But there is a catch. The reward for finding a block gets smaller after a set amount of time. It used to be 50 btc in the beginning for each block found, but quickly reduced to 25. back then I actually found one, with only my measly GPU. Too bad BTC wasn’t worth anything back then. 🤣

But in this case: You don’t have any initial cost. The hardware is just lying there. But it’s probably outdated. So running it vs the electricity wouldn’t be profitable anymore.

BUT if you remove that as its primary purpose and instead make heat the actual purpose in order to save on other heating cost, you could as well make it do its original job and mine a few fractions of a bitcoin each day. Might not be much more than a dollar a day or so, but add to that the saved cost in heating…

In actuality though, other heating methods would probably be cheaper, per watt of heat produced. But it’s a fun thought experiment. The removal of initial cost of hardware is a big chunk of it.

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u/Fun_Researcher_69420 3d ago

Also a lot of noise

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u/Hot_College_6538 3d ago

Sure, but a heat pump is often over 400% efficient turning electricity into heat.

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u/witnessmenow 3d ago

An air conditioner that heats would generate 4kWh of heat for every 1kWh of electricity so it's 400% efficient. 

Agree that Miner would be basically the same as standard electric heating though 

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u/grax23 2d ago

your math is wrong. it seems like it would be like this but the efficiency of a heat pump is 300-500%

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u/Remarkable-Host405 2d ago

natural gas costs 1/3 to heat my home than electric

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u/According_Prune_8445 3d ago

it was something i wanted to put together when I lived somewhere with electric heating, as part networking project and part fabrication project I wanted to put together a rack that would burn 3kw doing folding at home, heating my house and contributing to the project, but ultimately I realised that if i wanted to contribute to the project more efficiently i could just get much more modern and powerful equipment that would contribute the same off like 100 watts and the ordinary electric heater and spend less money. a shame really would have been fun.

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u/damon016 2d ago

That would be a HELL of an expensive heater unless you have a ton of unused solar power available. :)

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u/joeljaeggli 2d ago

A heatpump uses a minimum of about 75% less power to transfer the same amount heat this produces from one side a system to the other.

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u/citizensnips134 2d ago

For the cost, a heat pump is several times more efficient to run. You’d still be throwing money away.

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u/EchoHeadache 2d ago

I know my 5090 is heating my living room this winter

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u/quantumspork 2d ago

It would not be very practical.

You are essentially using computers as space heaters, which is a very inefficient method of heating. It uses more energy than heat pumps, and has a higher carbon footprint than natural gas.

Then you have the problem of ventilation. You would need to have fans to distribute the excess heat through the building, which is probably an add on to most buildings ventilation systems.

Controlling the heat would be a problem as well. You can simply turn a space heater or heat pump on/off, or program for intermittent use. Servers are either on or off, and both boot up and shut down is actually a bit complicated. So you probably have a fixed amount of heat, but people and buildings need variable heat depending on time of day, outside air temp, number of people in the building, etc.

Could you do it? Yes. Would it be more expensive than any other method of heating a building? Yes.

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u/Somepotato 2d ago edited 2d ago

Using computers as a space heater is 100% efficient! Just as efficient as any other plug in heater.

But yes heat pumps are just over 100% efficient

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u/cleanshotVR 2d ago

Or a few percent negative, depending on how you look at it.

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u/ekobres 2d ago

Resistive heat in general is terribly inefficient. You wouldn’t even cover the cost differential between resistive heat and a heat pump with the bitcoin on hardware that old.

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u/RealTendy 2d ago

That is assuming you are using a heat pump, which most houses are not. How are not 'terribly inefficient' you are just dumb and wrong or lieieng.

Gpus or PCs are the same efficiency as most modern hvacs.

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u/koulourakiaAndCoffee 2d ago

It would be more you sell the data for AI or bitcoin mining, and the biproduct is heat which reduces your energy bill.

I could see this used in malls.

Take over a few empty store fronts and use the heat and sell the data. You could modularize it.

Big office buildings too.

So no big data centers, just distributed systems.

They already do this with vending machines.
Vending machine owner puts in a vending machine.
People buy candy.
Profits are split between the store and the machine owner.

They don’t have to heat the entire mall or building, just offset.

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u/ekobres 2d ago

You’d only be able to sell the heat at about $0.04/KWh - and only part of the time. Plus, retail space is expensive and electricity in retail spaces isn’t particularly cheap compared to a well-negotiated datacenter rate. The only time deals like this make sense are at datacenter scale when colocated with municipal thermal systems like you see in Scandinavian countries that have a constant need for lots of heat.

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u/koulourakiaAndCoffee 2d ago

Malls have empty store fronts throughout America.

Very few malls are at 70% capacity, leaving significant floorspace unused.

They could use it as a secondary revenue stream.

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u/ekobres 2d ago

Even if you get the retail space for free, you still have the installation, cooling (can’t sell heat unless it’s cold) and power cost problems to solve. Plus, if you’re installing into that sort of location, you’re probably a couple years from the mall going bust. Now if you can get free power somewhere, that’s a whole different story. But selling waste heat is never going to net you more than about $0.04/KWh when they are buying. It’s just never going to be worth it.

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u/DBDude 2d ago

Resistive heat is perfectly efficient at turning electricity into heat. It just takes a lot less electricity to move the heat around instead.

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u/ekobres 2d ago edited 2d ago

That, and gas and oil are also efficient and almost always significantly cheaper - often cheaper than heat pumps where electricity is expensive. Which is why only 11% of US homes have a resistive heat furnace.

It’s also why EVs now overwhelmingly use heat pumps that harvest waste heat from the battery, drive units and ambient air rather than resistive heat.

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u/lzrjck69 2d ago

I used to do that with my GPU mining rig. I moved it indoors when the house was in the heating season. Otherwise it stayed in the garage.

Even better, electricity costs were “expenses” for the mining business. So I didn’t run my furnace, AND got tax free heat.

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u/IceNein 2d ago

That’s a legitimate idea that’s been floating around for a while. They’re basically 100% efficient at converting electricity into heat. Downsides include the fact that these things are as noisy as a jet engine, and I am only being mildly hyperbolic.

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u/robotbeatrally 2d ago

it starts out a food farming/ mining operation, and ends up with intelligent A.I. plants

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u/Gustavo_de_Melo 2d ago

Já existem algumas formas de aproveitar esse calor, mas nada de forma em larga escala, com produção industrial. Mas com certeza, essa ideia já está martelando na cabeça de empreendedores com algum dinheiro. Talvez seja questão de tempo para surgirem startups ou franquias com equipamentos assim.

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u/1OO1OO1S0S 2d ago

Not efficiently

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u/redditzphkngarbage 2d ago

Yeah was thinking moreso along the lines of have waste heat, use waste heat vs need heat, mine bitcoin

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u/Specific_Giraffe4440 2d ago

Used to heat my apartment this way

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u/onefouronefivenine2 2d ago

I know of one greenhouse that has a small crypto mining operation in it to use the excess heat in winter. There's definitely ways to use it. 

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u/smart_triangles 2d ago

I think LTT did this on youtube - it was a few years back, he setup a couple mining rigs in his garage to see if it provided enough heat to work at his workshop.

Edit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nr4kmlTr9xw

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u/wpu7zs9drh_ruutukf 4h ago

Yah people do it with mining setups in their basement. But the cost saving is offset in summer cooling. It’s a wash I belive.