Do you think hair dryers should be banned? Are clothes dryers indefensible? They all are unnecessary- just hang clothes up.
And use dar more power than bitcoin.
And use dar more power than bitcoin.
So the trend there has been for reduction in use in energy (particularly in Europe, where the regulators are leaning on the manufacturers). A modern heat pump dryer is far more efficient than a traditional dryer, say, and will be the dominant type in Europe soon, and probably shortly afterwards in the US.
Crypto-nonsense, on the other hand, tends to use _more_ energy over time.
And, frankly, if you banned hairdryers and clothes dryers, literally billions of people would be very annoyed. If you banned crypto-stuff tomorrow, certain parts of twitter would be very annoyed, and the vast majority of people would not even _notice_. Totally different political calculus.
Not sure if you were just joking or if you simply didn't know that miners can double as heaters without loss (or if you meant something else).
Also heaters are way better at converting energy to heat, since they don't have to do the whole mining thing. And they can reach higher temperatures without frying themselves. Being a simple resistor rather than complex logical circuit.
If I spend 1kWh to just warm water vs I spend some part of that 1kWh to mine bitcoin and warm water, the former will be more efficient.
Sure but the point is that this will be earned back easily. If it didn't turn a profit then nobody would buy them today, let alone when they have an extra purpose.
> they can reach higher temperatures without frying themselves
Sure, we can't replace industrial processes like forging steel with mining. But residential heating requires no more than, say, 70°C which is easily within reach of any chip today. I was specifically talking about replacing something like a space heater, not a process that needs hundreds of degrees.
> If I spend 1kWh to just warm water vs I spend some part of that 1kWh to mine bitcoin and warm water, the former will be more efficient.
Is that so? How much then? Because I've always heard it's 1:1 for all intents and purposes.
Edit: of course I have to look it up myself... https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Gaming-PC-vs-Spac... Looking at the graph, it's like I said /edit.
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Note I'm not saying this is necessarily a good idea, it seems ripe for abuse (running the miner also when you don't need the heat) and we'd have more chip shortage issues, but I am interested from a technological standpoint. It seemed to me like it would be an improvement if their waste heat was used.
No, it won't. Most chips go in the trash without ever mining a block. This is just more crypto theory that doesn't match reality.
If you find me a way to cut down on my heating costs in the winter using chips, you can bet I'm going to use it. The problem is, you can't.
"Most chips go in the trash without ever mining a block" that's your own choice, isn't it? If you don't want to waste the product you bought, don't trash it?
"This is just more [nonsense] crypto theory" I do not invest in cryptocurrency. I bought socks for like 2BTC back in the good old days when it wasn't yet apparent (to me at least) that bitcoin was going to be a major problem; bitcoin was interesting technology for teenage me back in 2012. I'm not some delusional trader that is making profit off the backs of everyone's climate and wants to justify mining. See basically everything else I said above. In particular the part where I said "Note I'm not saying this is necessarily a good idea, it seems ripe for abuse [...] but I am interested from a technological standpoint." The person was making technological arguments, not some nonsense about "crypto theory".
"If you find me a way..." Do you own a computer? There, turn it on during winter, have fun gaming. Now you're generating heat using electricity that you'd consume for gaming regardless.
I don't think you understand how all of this works. Mining chips have a lifespan, they don't last forever. They stop working, then you can't use them to compute hashes anymore. Most mining chips die--as in stop working--before they ever mine a block.
>turn it on during winter, have fun gaming.
I already do that. Mining Bitcoin to heat my home, on the other hand, will lose me money. I'll just burn through expensive chips without ever getting a reward, because a home mining rig can't compete with the industrial operations. The idea doesn't work.
Any device that converts energy to heat can be replaced by another that converts the same amount of energy to the same amount of heat while doing POW work.
But it doesn't matter, because the reward would be so small in this case that it wouldn't outweigh the cost of buying a chip to put in an appliance. If you think I'm wrong, then by all means mine hardware with all of your heating devices. Hell, if the money is really there, create a startup selling mining appliances and get rich. It's easy money, right? Start today.