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273 sats \ 28 replies \ @billiam 2 Nov 2023 \ on: What do you think the next major win for bitcoin will be? bitcoin
A win would be if every bitcoiner buys a S9 and starts mining bitcoin to decentralize mining operations. Join a smaller pool or do solo mining (lottery). Use the S9 as a heating.
dont do this, you are just going to have the an extremely loud fan that burns money
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Did the math recently as I live in a cold climate...
An S9 iirc mines about 4-8 cents per kilowatt hour depending on assumptions.
Now, also assuming you could duct it well so that it delivered heat as quietly and efficiently to living space as possible, you have to compare your electric rates vs. the cost of other heating sources like oil/propane/natgas on a BTU basis.
What I found is that, on a BTU basis, electricity as a national average is a much more expensive heating source than fossils. So much so that the 4-8c per kwh gets you doesn't make up for it.
Plus, you're depreciating the miner. You could have just bought coin instead of the miner too.
As a heater, it rarely makes sense to run it 24x7, heat is typically thermostatically controlled.
Therefore, it's only rational if you have a usecase for a 24x7 heater in a place with abnormally cheap electricity rates and higher than normal fossil rates.
So basically, nowhere.
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This makes sense if you can choose between oil/propane/natgas a the primary source of energy where you live. In my suburb, I have district heating as the default or electricity for a heat pump. I have the latter + e-radiators as "boosters" (+ fireplace) and a highly thermal insulated building with ventilation unit. Now it makes suddenly total sense to run a miner and have bitcoin as "waste product", believe it or not.
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how annoying is the sound though? every s9 I've heard is the most annoying sound i've ever heard
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You need to replace the 2 default 120mm fans with 140mm Noctua silent fans and operate the S9 at lower watts. I run the S9 with 750W @ 9.7 TH/s and it's not loud at all.
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district heating
TIL that's a thing
Now you're going to make me cost compare vs cordwood or pellets...
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I got my trusty nerdminer running at 50kh/s
so decentralized
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Yes, nice blockclock. Shows me sats/vb and the fiat price. Doesn't earn you any sats. A S9 with 13TH/s earns you a few sats at least and works as a heating.
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A very expensive form of heating.
No thanks, I'd rather use my gas boiler or a heat pump.
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This depends on the thermal insulation (my outside walls are 30cm think with mineral wool insulation) and quality of your house and windows to keep the heat inside. I have a ventilation unit that recycles the heat with a heat pump. Any additional heat is added as per design with electricity or for the extreme cold days I have a fireplace.
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You're missing the point of the S9 as heater.
I agree, if you have efficient heating in your house already, it's definitely not worth it.
The point of the S9 is to replace an existing resistive heating source.
Of course replacing a heat pump is not a good use for this.
I live in Canada and as mentioned have $0.13/KWh (first 1350 KWh are at $0.095) rate. My house is kept warm with a wood stove and resistive heaters. An approved heat pump costs in the high thousands, close to $10k installed. Only 6-7 months of the year of use makes that investment damn near a decade to pay off, if it cuts my current bill by 70%.
But yeah, at $0.60/KWh, it makes way more sense to pay for heat pump install.
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Doesn't earn you any sats
I trust this purchase to win me a block reward. I'm in the lottery and guaranteed a block within the next 10pow18 years or so!
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The hard part is you have to constantly upgrade and a pleb can’t afford to do that every year or two
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Get an old S9 and run it for as long as you can. $120 or so + fan upgrades. If you can replace a heater purchase you're at no loss.
600w and 40% fan speed is quiet and gets you 7 TH/s with enough heat for a sizeable room.
It's not a for profit operation, but will pay for itself over a couple years, even in a $0.10-$0.15/KWh grid, IF you can substitute it for a heater.
Here's my setup in the works. I'm planning on building my own case/box for it.
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My rates are closer to $0.60/kWh.
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Ouch!
I guess I shouldn't have bothered to put an electricity rate in that post. It kinda doesn't matter if you're replacing a heater that you use anyway.
The upfront cost, and time it takes to pay that off is really only a function of how much and how hard you run the miner.
Treat it like a heater that gives you a small rebate on electricity you would use anyway (that's the important part - use anyway) It's not a miner looking for profit.
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It's like resistive heating with a negligible discount, not standard heating, which, given which century we're in, would be a heat pump if you stick to electric. Unless you live in the United States of Gas Guzzlers where energy is dirt cheap and it makes more sense to burn it like there is no tomorrow than to replace the cardboard walls of your house with something that actually retains some heat.
I use natural gas in the house and a heat pump in the outbuilding, both of which cost roughly 1/4 of what resistive heating does.
The profitability calculator says my profits from running an S9 would be -$13 per day, which is a loss of $4745 annually. That's twice as much as my annual utility bills, which include heating, air con (not much as my climate is on the cool side), cooking, lighting, TV, PCs and a bunch of other things.
There is absolutely no incentive for me to replace my climate control with something that only heats, costs more to run and makes a lot of noise on top of that.
Really, energy is much more expensive in many places than where you live, also heating is not needed everywhere, e.g. people who live in the tropics may need cooling and no heating at all.
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If your winters get cold, there could at least be benefit to adding a miner as a preheater of the air intake.
That's my plan for my house I'll afford in 100 years.
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I couldn't agree more. Totally. That's the way. S9's are cheap nowadays. Use them as a heating and support small mining pools.
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How many sats can you pull out of this puppy on the average day?
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~400sats, sometimes more, depends on the pool luck.
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Which pool are you using? I run 3 TH/s 24/7 on Braiins pool and get more sats per day than that
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Depends on the weather. Right now, I have it not running 24/7. Maybe 6hrs a day max. Braiins pool, StratumV2
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Ive had at least 750 sats and at most 2500 (only on one day) running 7TH for 14 hours or so. My BrainsPool avg estimate is 891 sats. I'm on stratumV2.
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That’s pretty damn good
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Not too bad
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My S9 is not profitable. I run it with 750W as a heating radiator. It helps, no need to upgrade to a S19 or so.
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(don't worry about the noise if you run it with 140mm Noctua high performance fans)
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