The power consumption of crypto mining...

justoffal

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Jun 29, 2013
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As you know one of the latest crazes in the world of high-tech alternative income is crypto mining the two most popular are Bitcoin and ethereum. The amazing amount of energy consumed by the machines that do the mining is nearly staggering. I just finished a one-week study of the numbers to see whether or not it was worth the investment which could easily exceed 40 to $50,000 on the first run.

First of all you have to make sure you have a 200 amp House service. Does that give you the jitters?? It should. Since the beginning of the mining game special machines called ASIC miners have become available from manufacturers they currently run about $11,000 a piece for a top producing model.

(An ASIC (application-specific integrated circuit) is a microchip designed for a special application, such as a particular kind of transmission protocol or a hand-held computer. You might contrast it with general integrated circuits, such as the microprocessor and the random access memory chips in your PC)

That's only the base price BTW you can easily double or triple that depending on how fancy you want to get. Assuming a kilowatt-hour cost of less than 20 cents per KWH one ASIC can make anywhere from $300 to $600 a month in profit after expenses. Attention young foolish investors and suckers in general... That type of rate is no longer available once you average in the transmission fees, green energy taxes and connection contract service fees from your local grid provider. I'm finding after analyzing numerous bills from around the country sent to me by friends who are interested in doing an energy audit that the true cost of the kilowatt hour now averages between 25 cents and 35 vents per kilowatt hour. So depending on how much the crypto your mining is worth at the moment how much power your rig uses you could possibly make $100 a month in profit at that rate. If you're going to use an ASIC I recommend you use it as an alternative heat source for your house because that's how much heat it actually produces per unit.

That could make it more profitable in the winter if you are actually able to shut your furnace off and just run the ASIC. All in all the whole effort probably isn't worth it. You would have to have another purpose for the heat and that really only works in the cold season. In the hot summer months I'm not sure what you could do with that heat unless you use it to dry your clothes and then you'd have to worry about overheating the machine itself. The other danger is a crypto crash which would very quickly eliminate your profit margin and take you into negative numbers. I'm not a fan of the CCP or of China but it's pretty easy to see why they banned this activity in a country that is struggling to generate electricity and that still has many parts of the country living in the dark.

If anyone has information for me that can change my mind about this I would be interested. For a brief moment I thought I had discovered an interesting passive income however turns out to be complete bull crap.

If something sounds too good to be true well you know the rest.

Jo
 
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As you know one of the latest crazes in the world of high-tech alternative income is crypto mining the two most popular are Bitcoin and ethereum. The amazing amount of energy consumed by the machines that do the mining is nearly staggering. I just finished a one-week study of the numbers to see whether or not it was worth the investment which could easily exceed 40 to $50,000 on the first run.

First of all you have to make sure you have a 200 amp House service. Does that give you the jitters?? It should. Since the beginning of the mining game special machines called ASIC miners have become available from manufacturers they currently run about $11,000 a piece for a top producing model.

(An ASIC (application-specific integrated circuit) is a microchip designed for a special application, such as a particular kind of transmission protocol or a hand-held computer. You might contrast it with general integrated circuits, such as the microprocessor and the random access memory chips in your PC)

That's only the base price BTW you can easily double or triple that depending on how fancy you want to get. Assuming a kilowatt-hour cost of less than 20 cents per KWH one ASIC can make anywhere from $300 to $600 a month in profit after expenses. Attention young foolish investors and suckers in general... That type of rate is no longer available once you average in the transmission fees, green energy taxes and connection contract service fees from your local grid provider. I'm finding after analyzing numerous bills from around the country sent to me by friends who are interested in doing an energy audit that the true cost of the kilowatt hour now averages between 25 cents and 35 vents per kilowatt hour. So depending on how much the crypto your mining is worth at the moment how much power your rig uses you could possibly make $100 a month in profit at that rate. If you're going to use an ASIC I recommend you use it as an alternative heat source for your house because that's how much heat it actually produces per unit.

That could make it more profitable in the winter if you are actually able to shut your furnace off and just run the ASIC. All in all the whole effort probably isn't worth it. You would have to have another purpose for the heat and that really only works in the cold season. In the hot summer months I'm not sure what you could do with that heat unless you use it to dry your clothes and then you'd have to worry about overheating the machine itself. The other danger is a crypto crash which would very quickly eliminate your profit margin and take you into negative numbers. I'm not a fan of the CCP or of China but it's pretty easy to see why they banned this activity in a country that is struggling to generate electricity and that still has many parts of the country living in the dark.

If anyone has information for me that can change my mind about this I would be interested. For a brief moment I thought I had discovered an interesting passive income however turns out to be complete bull crap.

If something sounds too good to be true well you know the rest.

Jo
Very interesting analysis.

Thank you.

My ability to understand electronics has always been stunningly weak. I have no idea why. My mechanical aptitude is similarly weak, it drives my mechanic nutty.

. . . so, if this is a dumb question, please, excuse. I do get the heat excess from PC processing, as I have had that problem occasion when PC fans break, but. . . if you could, somehow, generate renewable energy?

Either in northern latitudes, to run the whole operation, or recycle the heat energy, back into a renewable energy paradigm?

:dunno:
 
Just spitballing, it would seem, if you could incorporate this, somehow, to solve the problem?

 
Very interesting analysis.

Thank you.

My ability to understand electronics has always been stunningly weak. I have no idea why. My mechanical aptitude is similarly weak, it drives my mechanic nutty.

. . . so, if this is a dumb question, please, excuse. I do get the heat excess from PC processing, as I have had that problem occasion when PC fans break, but. . . if you could, somehow, generate renewable energy?

Either in northern latitudes, to run the whole operation, or recycle the heat energy, back into a renewable energy paradigm?

:dunno:
Yes a constantly used PC certainly does generate a fair amount of heat energy. I have never tried to measure the full btu content of the average PC output...(but now that you mention it I just might do that) However if you do want run one constantly I recommend you do so in a room that needs heating. It sure can't hurt.

Jo
 
Seems such a waste to let all that heat just go to waste, when you need energy to run the whole process. . . :dunno:
 
Just spitballing, it would seem, if you could incorporate this, somehow, to solve the problem?

That's very interesting actually. I presume the method by which you obtain the electrolyzed gases is simply electrolysis. I'm not sure if there's another way to do that. I'm not familiar with the energy use of an electrolysis rig as opposed to the amount of gas it liberates and the potential energy therein but I certainly would not be averse to investigating it.
 
Seems such a waste to let all that heat just go to waste, when you need energy to run the whole process. . . :dunno:
Oh absolutely true anyone running one of those industrial crypto machines is foolish if they don't find a second use for the heat.
 
Oh absolutely true anyone running one of those industrial crypto machines is foolish if they don't find a second use for the heat.
Yeah, that is all I was thinking.

It consumes a crap ton of energy, and results in a crap ton of heat, so it is only logical to think of a way to reconvert that heat, as efficiently as possible, back into energy.

That was just the first thought that came to mind.
 
Seems like all that energy use would devalue the value of the crypto currency . Am I wrong?
 
Oh absolutely true anyone running one of those industrial crypto machines is foolish if they don't find a second use for the heat.
Use it to power a Stirling engine that turns a generator.

Or just run it inside your home to heat it in the winter.
 
As you know one of the latest crazes in the world of high-tech alternative income is crypto mining the two most popular are Bitcoin and ethereum. The amazing amount of energy consumed by the machines that do the mining is nearly staggering. I just finished a one-week study of the numbers to see whether or not it was worth the investment which could easily exceed 40 to $50,000 on the first run.

First of all you have to make sure you have a 200 amp House service. Does that give you the jitters?? It should. Since the beginning of the mining game special machines called ASIC miners have become available from manufacturers they currently run about $11,000 a piece for a top producing model.

(An ASIC (application-specific integrated circuit) is a microchip designed for a special application, such as a particular kind of transmission protocol or a hand-held computer. You might contrast it with general integrated circuits, such as the microprocessor and the random access memory chips in your PC)

That's only the base price BTW you can easily double or triple that depending on how fancy you want to get. Assuming a kilowatt-hour cost of less than 20 cents per KWH one ASIC can make anywhere from $300 to $600 a month in profit after expenses. Attention young foolish investors and suckers in general... That type of rate is no longer available once you average in the transmission fees, green energy taxes and connection contract service fees from your local grid provider. I'm finding after analyzing numerous bills from around the country sent to me by friends who are interested in doing an energy audit that the true cost of the kilowatt hour now averages between 25 cents and 35 vents per kilowatt hour. So depending on how much the crypto your mining is worth at the moment how much power your rig uses you could possibly make $100 a month in profit at that rate. If you're going to use an ASIC I recommend you use it as an alternative heat source for your house because that's how much heat it actually produces per unit.

That could make it more profitable in the winter if you are actually able to shut your furnace off and just run the ASIC. All in all the whole effort probably isn't worth it. You would have to have another purpose for the heat and that really only works in the cold season. In the hot summer months I'm not sure what you could do with that heat unless you use it to dry your clothes and then you'd have to worry about overheating the machine itself. The other danger is a crypto crash which would very quickly eliminate your profit margin and take you into negative numbers. I'm not a fan of the CCP or of China but it's pretty easy to see why they banned this activity in a country that is struggling to generate electricity and that still has many parts of the country living in the dark.

If anyone has information for me that can change my mind about this I would be interested. For a brief moment I thought I had discovered an interesting passive income however turns out to be complete bull crap.

If something sounds too good to be true well you know the rest.

Jo

This just proves that humanity is insane.

Literally wasting electricity for NO GOOD REASON.
 
So it would seem
Some might say that maintaining a reserve currency that governments can't monkey with is worth it. That said, lots of people are working on the energy consumptions problems inherent in crypto.
 

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