I never run out of brilliant ideas for this blog… because I steal them from smarter people. Here’s one from Andrea Matranga: If you’re going to deploy an electric space heater in a cold bedroom, bathroom, or office, instead use a bitcoin-mining box so that the electricity isn’t simply wasted. If the capital cost is objectionable, use a previous generation of hardware (essentially worthless). The result won’t be a profit, but it will be less of a loss than if a regular space heater had been employed.
Readers: thoughts?
Electric heaters and bitcoin machines should output nearly the same number of BTUs per W – about 3.1 BTUs per W expended I think.
That’s actually the only viable use for a bitcoin machine, long term. I think Microsoft had the idea of replacing heaters with distributed computing machines a while ago. https://spectrum.ieee.org/energywise/energy/the-smarter-grid/heat-your-house-with-someone-elses-computers
It is already exist: “ Qarnot designed and operates the Q.rad, the first computing heater using embedded microprocessors as heat source. Totally silent, it gets computing instructions through the Internet. The heat produced by computing provides then free and efficient heating for residential, office and public buildings“
A cottage that’s heated for free with bitcoin mining
https://qz.com/1117836/bitcoin-mining-heats-homes-for-free-in-siberia/
Amazon’s newer office buildings are heated using a heat exchanger from the Westin Building Exchange (fiber hotel) in downtown Seattle… https://www.seattletimes.com/business/real-estate/amazon-towers-will-be-heated-by-neighbors-excess-energy/