Home heating with Bitcoin miners is now a real thing

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If you were reading this article a month ago, you could have been forgiven for thinking it was an April Fool’s joke. But we assure you that this is no joke. A company called HeatBit recently opened pre-orders for its second-generation Bitcoin miner that doubles as a heatsink.

The logic goes something like this: if you’re using an electric heater anyway, which essentially generates heat by wasting a lot of energy with a resistive element, why not replace that element with a Bitcoin miner instead? Or at least part of the item. The specs listed for the HeatBit Mini indicate that the miner itself only draws 300 watts, which is only responsible for a fraction of the device’s total heat output. Most of the thermal work is actually done by a traditional 1000 watt radiator built inside the 46cm (18in) tall cylindrical device.

This new Mini version looks very different from the original HeatBit, a hulking machine that combined outdated application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) miners with a turbine-like fan to produce heat. Doing a bit of research on the old model, it seems the results have been very mixed, with several reviewers complaining that the latest generation ASICs used by the $1200 heatsink would take way too long to mine enough crypto. to pay himself.

A teardown of the previous HeatBit revealed slightly tweaked minor ASICs, a large fan, and not much else.

In comparison, the $299 Mini looks more like a traditional heater with a secondary Bitcoin mining mode. We’d say that at this price it’s probably worth trying out the concept, if it wasn’t for the fine print… if you buy the Mini at this “early bird” price, HeatBit will skim 50% of the Bitcoin your the device launches. If you want to keep all the parts to yourself, you have to shell out for the “Full Ownership” version which has an introductory price of $549 and climbs to $749 once the heaters are available at retail.

If that’s not enough, the Mini specs show a hashrate of up to 10 TH/s. We analyzed this on a few calculators and, combined with the stated power consumption of 300 watts, it seems that the device is not even capable of breaking even at current BTC prices. So if you were hoping to make a profit, forget it.

Calculator courtesy of CyptoCompare.com

Assuming the current rate of around $26,800 for 1 BTC, the Mini would fetch around $22 per month if you used it 24 hours a day. But with the average cost of electricity in the US (0.16 $/kWh), it would have cost you about $35 just to power it. Factor in the 50% that HeatBit takes away, and the math just doesn’t work. Sure, you could argue that it’s cheaper to run than a traditional electric heater, but the hardware gain is just too great considering you’ll only be using the thing for a few months a year to begin. .

Ultimately, if you want to try warming up your desktop with Bitcoin, you better grab a second-hand ASIC miner and build the thing yourself. It still wouldn’t be the lucrative scheme it might look like at first glance, but at least you wouldn’t have a business that takes half of your profits every month.

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