Sunday, January 10, 2021

Bitcoin’s mining difficulty set a new record high

 

Increasing in cost of production in USD terms along with the BTC...




4 comments:

Ahmed Fares said...

re: heating your home with crypto mining

Mining at full throttle, it draws about 220 watts. That’s 716 BTUs of heat per hour or 17,184 BTUs per day. During my testing, it generated about $0.76 in mining profits each day.

My winter electric rate is $0.24 per KWH, so at 220 watts * 24 hours per day, that’s 5.28 KWH per day. That means my rig costs $1.26 per day to run. Subtract the $0.76 in crypto earnings, and that’s a net cost of $0.50 per day.

So how does this stack up against other forms of heating? Well, compared to a normal electric space heater, it’s immediately lower cost (not counting the cost of equipment).

Remember that a 220-watt space heater would draw 220 watts of power and produce 220 watts of heat. And you wouldn’t get any of that back in crypto earnings. So even if it only generated a penny each day, heating with crypto still saves money versus other forms of electric heat.

My house is mainly heated by natural gas, though. How does a crypto heater stack up against natural gas heat? Natural gas is measured in therms. A therm equals 100,000 BTU. Remember that my rig is making 17,184 BTUs per day of heat, so it’s essentially saving .17184 therms of natural gas per day.

My utility, PGE, currently charges $1.42 per therm. So heating with crypto is saving another $0.24 per day by avoiding some natural gas costs. There are likely other costs, too. To heat with natural gas, my HVAC uses a heat pump and fans, which draw around 1000 watts when the system is running. That probably adds another 10 to 15 cents per day in electricity saved by the crypto heater vs. natural gas.

So to recap, my crypto heater costs $1.26 per day to run, in pure electric costs. It makes back $0.76 of that from crypto earnings, and another $0.35 or from reduced natural gas usage and reduced electric costs for my HVAC. So running it costs me about $0.15 per day.

That’s not bad--I’m not getting paid to heat my home, or quite breaking even, but offsetting heating costs with crypto profits does greatly reduce the amount I spend for those 220 watts of heating power.

If I lived in a state with lower electric costs, I could likely break even, or even make money heating my home with crypto. Or if crypto prices increased, I could likely close the gap and break even on heating costs, too.


source: Heating My Home with Crypto Mining

Ahmed Fares said...

Further to my comment, the benefits of distributed Bitcoin mining.

How bitcoin mining is heating a home for free

Matt Franko said...

Canadians have the advantage....

Matt Franko said...

Here in mid Atlantic the big hvac costs are in cooling not heating.,,