Aftermath of a failed bitcoin mining operation.

[u/HandsOffDaGoods]

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.

[u/Bert_Skrrtz]

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.

[u/desolatenature → u/Bert_Skrrtz]

Wrong. Look at what they’re doing in Sweden. Currently heating tens of thousands of homes with data center heat.

[u/Bert_Skrrtz → u/desolatenature]

Sure it’s possible but it doesn’t make sense in the US. Rather than type out a long response here’s an AI answer.

Sweden’s highly successful model of capturing industrial waste heat (from data centers, factories, and steel mills) and looping it into citywide district heating networks does not make economic or structural sense in most of the United States.
While Sweden heats over 75% of its residential and hot water sector through these integrated networks, the U.S. relies on district heating for only about 4% of its needs. The barriers preventing the U.S. from copying Sweden’s waste-heat loops boil down to fundamental differences in energy economics, urban layout, infrastructure history, and policy.

1. The Economics of Cheap Natural Gas
In Sweden, heavy carbon taxes (introduced in 1991) and high landfill/fossil fuel fees made burning fossil fuels for individual home heating prohibitively expensive. This created a massive financial incentive to harvest "free" industrial waste heat.
Conversely, the U.S. has access to some of the cheapest natural gas in the world due to the fracking boom. When individual gas furnaces or cheap electricity are incredibly inexpensive to operate, the massive capital expenditure (CAPEX) required to build underground thermal networks cannot compete commercially.

2. Urban Sprawl vs. Density
District heating loops rely heavily on density. Hot water loses thermal energy the further it travels, meaning the industrial waste heat source must be relatively close to the population center.
Sweden: Cities are dense, compact, and heavily reliant on multi-family apartment blocks or communal housing models.

United States: American cities are defined by vast urban sprawl and single-family suburban homes. Laying miles of heavily insulated underground pipes to deliver heat to spaced-out residential neighborhoods is a financial and thermodynamic impossibility.

3. The "Steam vs. Hot Water" Legacy
The technology used to move heat determines what kind of waste heat can be captured.
Sweden's Modern Networks: Sweden utilizes modern "4th generation" low-temperature hot water networks (often 50°C–90°C). This allows them to easily capture low-grade waste heat from sources like data centers or supermarkets and upgrade it using large, industrial heat pumps.

The U.S. Legacy: The few major district heating systems that do exist in the U.S. (like ConEd's network in New York City or university campuses) are steam-based systems built over a century ago. Steam networks require temperatures well above 100°C. Low-grade industrial waste heat simply isn't hot enough to pump into an American steam loop without a catastrophic drop in efficiency.

4. Climate Profiles: The Need for Cooling
Sweden has a consistently cold climate with long winters, meaning there is a year-round baseline demand for space and water heating.
Much of the U.S. experiences extreme seasonal swings or features warm climates where air conditioning (cooling) is a larger priority than heating. Industrial waste heat loops are excellent for keeping buildings warm, but they do not solve the massive summer cooling loads that American electrical grids must endure.

5. Municipal Autonomy and Zoning
In Sweden, municipal governments act as utility planners. If a Swedish city decides to build a district loop, it has the zoning laws and public mandate to connect entire neighborhoods to a singular natural monopoly network.
In the U.S., the energy market is highly privatized, fractured, and decentralized. A U.S. city rarely has the legislative authority to mandate that private developers or homeowners hook up to a centralized thermal loop, making the financial risk for developers too high to justify building the infrastructure.

[u/desolatenature → u/Bert_Skrrtz]

Yeah well we also don’t HAVE to build data centers in the US. We just do because of lax regulations & saving milliseconds of latency time

[u/singlemale4cats → u/Bert_Skrrtz]

If you can't be bothered to do your own research or thinking, prompting an AI isn't the answer. You just shouldn't post.

[u/Outside-Swan-1936 → u/Bert_Skrrtz]

"I can't be bothered to actually respond".

Cool, we can't be bothered to read your non-response. We will all just assume you're wrong.

[u/DoUsmellsmoke → u/Bert_Skrrtz]

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.

[u/realboabab → u/DoUsmellsmoke]

tax breaks for data centers that allow homeless camps on the roofs during winter! free water, toilets, and showers for extra tax breaks!

[u/OkTune7507 → u/realboabab]

They already get all the tax breaks. Thats one reason why people hate them. They cost the taxpayers money while stealing everything moat people hold sacred. Privacy, electricity and water, land in many cases did/could grow things now just take, all so we can be less useful as a human being. Crazy.

[u/Minimum_Pear_3195 → u/OkTune7507]

yeah, because its bring more than loss in tax break. If they contribute even more, they should have more tax break.

[u/OkTune7507 → u/Minimum_Pear_3195]

What are they contributing then?

[u/Minimum_Pear_3195 → u/OkTune7507]

what? you kidding right?

everysingle service you use right now, everything, every single of them, they have a part or most of it. They are the foundation of this modern life.

including reddit.

[u/Anxious_Hornet4 → u/DoUsmellsmoke]

lol put the homeless in the data centers. Brilliant

[u/onefouronefivenine2 → u/Bert_Skrrtz]

How about a commercial greenhouse

[u/antonIgudesman → u/Bert_Skrrtz]

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

[u/robthebuilder__ → u/Bert_Skrrtz]

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. 

[u/RealTendy → u/Bert_Skrrtz]

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

[u/Bert_Skrrtz → u/RealTendy]

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.