How to get rich

It's beautiful weather in Amsterdam at the moment, but cold. The canals are largely iced-over. Luckily, my apartment has gas-fired central heating. Electric heating would be better for the environment, I suppose, but I can't change that for the while.

I was listening to the wireless [remember those?] this morning and there was something on about how much electricity gets wasted on Bitcoin mining. I've seen a small Bitcoin mining rig: it has lots of finned cooling blocks and a big fan. Still, energy is conserved so it has to go somewhere.

This set me thinking: why can't there be a central heating boiler with a built-in Bitcoin miner? It would need good insulation, of course, and a feedback mechanism to throttle the kit down when the water is hot enough. Sooner or later the radiators will be rattling with Bitcoins. Particularly when it's cold outside. And if you want to get rich quicker just shower more often. Or even better, combine your heater with a small cloud farm.

If you want to get rich real quick, however, you should make and sell Bitcoin Boilers. I only ask for 10 percent of the proceeds (oops, where's my block of patent forms...?) And how about this for an advertising slogan: "Greenest invention since the perpetuum mobile".

BB

Bitcoin heaters would be green for your home, but if enough people brought them, my guess is the few remaining US coal power plants might have to expand to handle the electric demand, if their states allows them to build more facilities. Nuclear power plants would have to work harder, and maybe have to expand also.

Anyway, the idea of heating your home with a Bitcoin miner was brought up at stackexchange.com in 2011. Not about selling Bitcoin heaters.
https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/qu...o-heat-my-home

Electricity is far from "clean" because of the costs of generation and transmission. It only gets worse when batteries are taken into account for so-called "renewable" sources because that means two more lossy conversions in the chain.

I want this to not matter as much as the next guy, but "green" is not "clean." At all.

You end up using more coal, natural gas, nuclear fission, etc. than if you used primary sources directly.

Up to a point, that's true. Overall, though, you burn coal one time in one day, while renewable sources are created once, then can keep producing for a very long time. Therefore, the cost of coal is paid directly, while the cost of everything else is spread over a much longer time window. Green is not free, but it is far cleaner.

As for heating with bitcoin generators: You will never boil water that way, because you have to keep the temperature fairly low. Silicon falls apart below the boiling point of water. If you approach the point where the silicon breaks down, it won't be a good thing anyways. So, the point of dumping the heat is to dump it when it is still relatively low. This means that it is hard to build up much of a gradient. Technically, you would be able to heat your house this way, but it would basically be like heating your house by leaving the stove on. It warms the air, but air doesn't hold that much heat. You need to heat the surfaces, too.

What you might be able to do is use the temperature differential between the cold outdoors and the heat coming off your bitcoin miner to run a Sterling cycle engine, and use that engine to generate electricity. You can't generate anywhere near what you are using, but you'd be able to generate some, which might defray your cost.

Curse you and your thermodynamics:mad:! Now I'll have to go off and invent an entropy inverter. I don't know any VB6 but I expect it will do the job. Oh, and an ironic smiley. I thought the last line of post #1 would have given the game away but apparently not.

P.s. a central heating boiler doesn't boil water. 60 degrees C is enough. Now let's suppose that the Bitcoin generator is equipped with an advanced Celsius to Fahrenheit converter...

EDIT: By the way, that Sterling engine sounds like a great idea. But won't it just produce Pounds Sterling instead of Bitcoin?

BB

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by boops boops

Curse you and your thermodynamics:mad:! Now I'll have to go off and invent an entropy inverter. I don't know any VB6 but I expect it will do the job. Oh, and an ironic smiley. I thought the last line of post #1 would have given the game away but apparently not.

P.s. a central heating boiler doesn't boil water. 60 degrees C is enough. Now let's suppose that the Bitcoin generator is equipped with an advanced Celsius to Fahrenheit converter...

---

I'm not sure there was a game to give away. Servers DO generate a lot of heat. In the summer, that's a bad thing, but I've always thought there ought to be a way to make use of them in the winter.

Quote:

---

EDIT: By the way, that Sterling engine sounds like a great idea. But won't it just produce Pounds Sterling instead of Bitcoin?

BB

---

Well, the price of silver has been spiking upwards kind of like GameStop...if GameStop could be mined and therefore had a supply capable of expanding.

Boy this thread just makes me feel old and stupid. I'd never heard of Bitcoin mining. I just read about it and it still makes no sense to me. You get a Bitcoin for solving complex equations, WHY??? It might make more sense if I actually took the time to understand Bitcoins. All I know is it's cryptocurrency, and that term scares me. lol

I don't think bitcoins worth getting into now. Maybe a couple of years ago when some people became really rich but now it does not worth individual effort and resources.
About clean energy. Here is a fun fact about our money grabbing id@ts representing us as government.
We have a LOT of coal and lignite. A LOOOOT of lignite to go around and fuse all of Europe. But, But... Our born of a humpback make out with a frog politicians, decided that we should stop using conventional fuel to produce electricity and we must Green ourselves. So, now we don't have enough electricity and we need to buy from neighbor countries that use lignite to feed our needs! Also lignite is packed and shipped to Germany for their needs.
Of course our politicians are traitors and you only need to hang traitors, but traitors you must hang. Hopefully with the upcoming elections and since the electronic vote is not a thing for now in Greece, so the election cannot be tampered as much as other stars and stripes countries, and if we ever wise up, there would be a government that will let us do a nice "clearance" of our current politicians. Nothing fancy, some hanging, disembowelment, maybe a coupe of stoning and burning or some good ol' Greek konium drinking to our lovable politicians so we can became a country again and not a protectorate of Germany and US.
Will have to see...

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by sapator

Nothing fancy, some hanging, disembowelment, maybe a coupe of stoning and burning or some good ol' Greek konium drinking to our lovable politicians so we can became a country again and not a protectorate of Germany and US.

---

Do I detect a slight irritation? Goodnight, for those who believe in night.

BB

Nop.
As we say here "kairos gar engys" , the time will come that they will pay for what they are doing.
Goodnight from Athens also :wave:

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by sapator

Nop.
As we say here "kairos gar engys" , the time will come that they will pay for what they are doing.
Goodnight from Athens also :wave:

---

Probably not, really.

By the way...why did you obfuscate idiot???? That word isn't against the censor is it?

EDIT: Nope, it isn't. You come up with all those highly entertaining (if a bit long-winded) insults yet you obfuscated a very mild word.

Back to Boop's idea, bitcoin boilers would cost around 7 times more electric-wise than the average cost of oil to heat a home, and that's not including the cost of the hardware. I know people could profit since the cost to mine one bitcoin is around $9,000 in power consumption, while a bitcoin is currently worth $39,000, but with it being so cheap to mine, and more miners coming onboard for the rush, would one day result in a steep correction resulting in halfing or more to a bitcoin's worth that late comers or people holding onto their bitcoins will lose money.


The only way to make money with your own bitcoin boiler is to generate enough of your own electricity to run it. And once you have the power consumption problem solved, keep the idea to yourself! :cool:

Climate Czar Gina McCarthy video in tweet:

https://twitter.com/lawyer4laws/stat...460891137?s=20

At the end: car being charged...

Interviewer: "Where does the power come from?"

Biden's McCarthy: "Derr, derr, it comes from the building!"

Local power company man: "Umm... our grid is 90, 95% coal."

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Shaggy Hiker

Probably not, really.

By the way...why did you obfuscate idiot???? That word isn't against the censor is it?

EDIT: Nope, it isn't. You come up with all those highly entertaining (if a bit long-winded) insults yet you obfuscated a very mild word.

---

I don't like swearing let alone see the word written but also thought it was censored as it's a swearing word in Greek.
Also since we are at the topic, idiot comes from the Greek word Idiotis, a person that is closed to him/herself and not participating in commons, have no education and culture.
So it's not swearing, per say but the newer meaning in modern Greek is swearing.

Well, in English, I think it would be said to be insulting, but I'm not sure that we'd say it was swearing. It's an interesting point. An insult can be a swear, but doesn't have to be. A swear can be an insult, but doesn't have to be. It's also interesting that the meaning of the word doesn't appear to have drifted all that much from the Greek.

The funny thing is that more and more often the lexicon uses really offensive words and phrases, but they are presented as something normal and ordinary, without the subtext of the offensive x)!