This Cryptocurrency Mining Rig Can Also Heat Your Home
Content adapted from this Zerohedge.com article : Source
The intensifying energy consumption of the bitcoin network is becoming a concern for environmentalists who have begun to question whether digital currencies should be considered a socially responsible investment. As we pointed out last month, Digiconomist's Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index stood at 29.05TWh.
That's the equivalent of 0.13% of total global electricity consumption. While that may not sound like a lot, it means Bitcoin mining is now using more electricity than 159 individual countries, including Ireland and Nigeria.
As the share of the world's electricity consumed by miners of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies rises, miners will likely face pressure – both economic and social – to find efficiencies wherever they can.
In anticipation of this trend, a crypto startup called Comino is marketing a mining rig that also functions as a heater.
Back in October, the Next Web published a report about the company and their new product, the Comino N1. In launching the product – priced at an affordable $5,000 per rig – the company is hoping t make it easier for novices and those who have only a glancing familiarity with crypto technology to start mining coin.
A reporter from The Next Web tested out the miner – and found that it both the heating and mining functions worked well. He even used it to heat his room during the winter.
After running the crypto-heater for a little over a month now, we are finally ready to share our experience with the device...
Once we installed the mining rig in our office, which practically included connecting the crypto-heater to the internet via the web-based dashboard system developed by Comino, it automatically created a wallet and began mining Ethereum. As easy as this.
Of course, if you already have a wallet, you still have the option to connect it to the dashboard. You can also connect any other mining rig to the Comino dashboard, in case you want to follow all of your mining efforts in one place.
Among other things, the online dashboard shows a number of statistics the Comino developers had programmed to monitor, including the current and average hashrate at which the miner is solving cryptographic puzzles, the current and average temperature at which it operates, as well as the unpaid balance of Ethereum you've accumulated. It also shows stats for the temperature of each separate GPU.
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Throughout this one-month trial, the only issue I experienced with the miner was that – for some reason – its ambient temperature sensor inaccurately picked up the temperature of the GPUs inside (which had just taken a break from mining); this prevented the device from booting up again, until it cooled down a little.
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And in case you were wondering about how reliable the Comino was as a heater : it certainly kept the temperature high enough to save some energy on heating bills, but not enough to make you turn on the air conditioner. Which is exactly what you want from a a machine that was built to bank on crypto.
The Comino N1 maintains an average hashrate of about 200 MH/s, and an average temperature of approximately 60 Celcius – about 140 degrees Farenheight.
Since installing the miner on Nov. 16, TNW reported that it has so far transferred a total of 1.2 ether to the company's designated wallet. Since Ethereum is currently trading around $700 a coin, the miner would pay for itself in eight months, assuming the value of Ethereum doesn't crash, or that an influx of new mining capacity decreases the miner's efficiency.
I believe this is the future for POW coins. Either that, or solar tech improves considerably in price and efficiency to make POW sustainable over the long-term without the environmental damage.
Great post there, keep up good work !
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Man people make a big deal out of nothing. They need to learn how things work.
The world is more environmentally friendly in terms of energy, albeit still heavily leaning towards fossil fuels, because of one thing: economics. The price of solar and wind plummeted.
Just last week we had an article about a mining company converting their operations to hydro power. Guess what happened, their profits went through the roof since their energy costs were almost entirely eliminated.
Who is the big country for bitcoin mining? China. Who has the biggest jump in solar installations the last two years? China.
Even if the bitcoin code isnt changed to use less energy, with the advancement of renewable energies in terms of the cost, heavy power users are at the top of the list to switch. This group would include bitcoin miners. A couple years ago, it was google and facebook who were sucking all the energy the world had...now they are both nearing, if they havent attained, complete powering by renewables for all their servers.
Environmentally friendly? Yes...but it saves them a boatload of money.
Nice. Thanks for sharing. There will definitely be a lot of innovation around optimizing these rigs if the technology sticks around.
Yes ! Unfortunately we have reached the max levels for transistors in chips, which will mean that the only way to be more efficient is to build the quantum computer for mass adoption or advancement in nanotech
One of the use cases for a mining rig is as a heater. The problem with mining is that big companies are entering the race. Which means that mining will be even more difficult for the top currencies.
I have written an article about the miners and bitcoin futures, you can check it here
True - the ROI will be small with the big dogs building robust systems.
This is fully informative post. Actually I haven't enough knowledge about cryptocurrency. A little bit learn form some blog.Your blog is one of them.Most of the time you writing about cryptocurrency. This is really helpful post for who are newly join here.Thank you very much to writing this matter.Please keep it up for us.
Interesting article. Thank you for posting.
Some ideas about this: We have to consider that those information mean that Bitcoin Mining can really be eco-friendly.
We can use energy for heating and, at the same time, for crypto mining. Simply, the energy produced in mining is converted in heat (obviously) and - this is the point- the heart is used in recycled for heating houses. This is a very cool way to optimize energy-consumption processes.
Of course, we have to consider that for mining you use green energy or some energy surplus by traditional sources - so the eco-disaster is still a not-near possibility, because there is none clear effect on world energy production obtained by using traditional sources
This would basically mean that people could heat their homes for free due to the earnings they get from mining cryptocurrencies. That´d be just another awesome thing cryptos could do for us all :)
Or another way to look at it...that miners will push renewable energy since it is too costly for them to operate on the traditional modes of electricity.
This could further the implementation of solar and wind.
I actually wonder why there are no big mining operations running on solar power in Australia for example. Mayve I just haven't heard of them but that'd be what I do.
they are usually the same people who believe in welfare that increases per resource-consuming human-produced more subsidized rent, more free groceries, more electricity assistance, more monthly cash assistance and bigger child tax credits for maximum womb productivity, the more citizens and maybe doubled by this tax cut/tax welfare plan. They are also the ones yammering to developing countries that are still largely agricultural, leading to energy consumption far beyond Bitcoin mining.electricity consumed by a miner solely for electronic use , the total heat produced is determined entirely by the wattage of the device.
very good news so people save money and the trees are not cut. global warming slows down