Warming my house with blockchain technology ;)

Mining ETH was hot stuff in May 2017. I decided to try it out - I bought five pieces of RX470 and made a $2.000 rig. I waited for a month to get all the components that I ordered (graphics cards and UPS' were out of stock worldwide) and after a few more days of trial and error I was finally ready to mine some gold. Or even better; some Ethereum.

But meanwhile, of course, the market chrashed and my hopes went down the water. When I started the project I was hoping to make $450 profit each month. But when I actually started mining, my monthly income was only about $220 before paying the electricity bill (the rig costs $75 a month). And I knew the numbers were only going to get worse with time because of the rising mining complexity.

After a few bad days I decided to stop worrying about it. I put the rig in my basement, switched it on and forgot about it. I'm not mining ETH explicitly, I'm using NiceHash application instead which does the mining for me (it mines whatever is most profitable at the moment) and pays me BTC every few weeks.

As you may know, mining rigs operate at max possible performance, and in my case that means five graphics cards generate heat constantly 24/7 at 700W power. That is a lot of heat actually. I can't imagine having two such rigs in my room. Even though my basement is pretty cold, my studio becomes quite warm after 1 hour with closed windows.

Today it's -2°C outside and I still need to open my window once every hour to let some cold air into my studio. My friend was blown away when I told him that I actually need to cool my living space during the winter. He immediately started calculating what it would take to make his apartment warm using mining rigs. :)

My rig consumes $75 worth of electricity a month. Now that BTC is thriving also my monthly income went up to $280. That means that in December I get free heat and earn $205 just by using my mining rig as a heater.

Ok, this may sound promising but let's not forget my initial investment was $2.000. After 5 months of mining I'm still paying to cover that expense, I'm at 70%. I hope my mining rig will still be opearing next winter so I will have much more exciting story to tell! :)

Money making heater.