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For a Bitcoin mining enthusiast, Bitcoin mining today is not the same as it was a few years ago.
Initially, you could mine Bitcoin using your CPU or GPU. However, as the price of Bitcoin soared, people realized there was money to be made, and the difficulty of mining began to soar, resulting in only those who could afford ASICs being able to mine profitably. The end result was that only the larger operators had a chance to compete.
Recent studies show that new miners will only break even when the price of Bitcoin is above $600 and electricity costs are below $0.1 per kilowatt-hour.
Another change is geography. Previously, miners were spread out all over the world, but large operations are concentrated in places that have at least one of the following conditions: cheap/free electricity or a cold environment.
A large part of the electricity consumption is used to cool the mining chips. Many computer users know that in order to prevent the CPU from overheating, there will be a noisy fan on the computer. If the miner chooses a cold climate environment or does not have to worry about electricity costs, then the cost of the cooling system is not so important.
Without such convenient conditions, how can Bitcoin mining be carried out?
Currently, only one company has launched equipment for personal mining, and that company is Beijing-based Bitmain. The company believes that their recently launched Antminer R4 is the best choice for mining enthusiasts to mine cryptocurrencies. But can this mining machine really mine Bitcoin?
Before this R4 miner was sold out, it cost $1,635 with a power adapter (plus shipping costs). Based on the price of Bitcoin at $594, a mining pool fee of 1%, and 12 cents per kilowatt-hour, it would take about 537 days to recoup the cost of this investment.
The 537-day result is calculated on the basis that the mining difficulty does not increase, so when more people participate in mining, the cost recovery period may be longer.
Nishant Sharma, international marketing manager at Bitmain, explained that the increase in cost per Ghz is due to the custom hardware used, which is the noise reduction hardware used in the R4. Its noise is kept at 52 decibels, which is about the noise level of talking at home, which is much quieter than ordinary Bitcoin mining machines.
“It is challenging to produce a low-power or cheap mining machine that can break even at the current bitcoin difficulty,” Sharma said.
Mining Heats Up Unfortunately, this is hardly of practical help to the average miner who wants to generate a profit, or even break even for the hobbyist miners who want to support the network, but, as the characters in Game of Thrones say: Winter is coming.
To keep warm in the dead of winter, why not take advantage of the byproduct that miners around the world want to get rid of: heat? Why not use that heat for good?
While this isn’t a new idea, there’s always a trade-off between noise and heat, and Sharma explains that the R4 actually works as a fan heater because of the low noise levels.
Space heaters are measured in British Thermal Units (BTUs). For every watt of power consumed by a space heater, it puts out 3.413 BTUs of heat.
A 900-watt electric heater costs $50. At 900 watts, it produces 3,071 BTUs, which can warm up a 90-square-foot room. To produce this amount of heat, people need to pay $2.59 per day for electricity. Let's assume that this heater is used four months a year, and the electricity bill is about over $310.
Your total investment for these calories is $360.
The R4 miner, which has a power of about 845W + 9%, consumes about the same amount of electricity as an electric heater every day. The difference is that the owner can earn about $3.04 in Bitcoin per day, or $394 in the same four months.
Is this a good deal? If you continue to run the miner for a whole year, it will take 408 days to recover the cost of the hardware, but for those who want to try mining, this saves some money.
Another option is to use the heat generated by the mining machine to heat water for bathing or washing hands.
A 50-gallon electric water heater, 5,500 watts, running for three hours a day, has an annual electricity bill of $722.78. The price of this water heater is about $500.
Since Bitcoin mining generates a lot of unnecessary heat, some companies have come up with the idea of using water to cool the mining chips.
One company trying this approach is BitHeat, which thinks it can build a mining rig that can heat 40 gallons of water hot enough for anywhere from $1,200 to $2,200.
The company wrote in a company blog post last November:
"Using a chip with 0.16J/GH power consumption and a selling price of $1,200, the payback period is about 20 months, and the return rate is 50% in 40 months. However, the payback period of BitFury's 16nm chip (0.06J/GH) is 6 months. Its selling price is calculated based on $1,200. If it is calculated based on a price of $3,000, the payback period is 18 months, and the return rate is 50% in 35 months."
The average lifespan of an electric water heater is 12 years. Such a water heater can pay back its investment in 18 months. In the remaining 10.5 years, it can not only heat water every day, but also mine Bitcoin.
Propagation Costs Ultimately, the decision to use the heat generated by mining is simple: you have to use electricity anyway, and since miners are using electricity, you are generating both Bitcoin and heat, and for those who need the heat, they also get Bitcoin, which is attractive.
The biggest problem is the cost of the hardware. The BitHeat team claims that their mining rigs can pay for themselves after 1.5 years, but that’s only if they provide hot water — something that only people who need heated water all year round need.
If a person simply wants to buy a mining machine to warm the room, then he will not want to start the mining machine when the weather is hot, which greatly increases the cost recovery cycle.
If you want to experience the feeling of mining anyway, using mining to keep warm and reduce costs is the most direct way to recover costs as quickly as possible.
Winter is Coming: Bitcoin Mining for Heat
Original author: Jacob Donnelly
Media source: Coindesk
Disclaimer: This article is translated by the BTC.com team and may not be reproduced without permission. If you need to reprint, please contact QQ843586524. |
