Heat Your Home and Mine Crypto at Once

As energy prices across the world and especially in Europe are rising, and as gas imports on the old continent are still significantly lower than what they used to be, many people are forced to look for alternative solutions to keep their home warm. It might seem that electric heaters are only a last option, as they are known to be quite energy hungry and expensive. 

But what if you could use the electricity not only to heat your home, but also to make money? Heatbit is a niche space heater that is supposed to not only heat your home, but to also mine Bitcoin, using the very same electricity that would be used to generate heat anyway.

The main features of Heatbeat

The device, which is produced by a startup company and has sold around 1000 units globally so far, uses similar integrated circuits that you can find in ASIC rigs. Traditional mining rigs usually require constant cooling. Seeing the heat produced by the rig not as a problem, but as a solution is therefore a clever concept. 

Of course, the heat generated by a standard rig is not enough for it to function as an actual heater, as the usual ASIC rigs could never survive without proper cooling. So the solution is more complicated than that. However, to jump to the facts stated by Heatbit co-founder, Alex Busarov, the special device can keep 500 square feet of space at a comfortable temperature and calculating with the current Bitcoin price of around $18,000, it can earn you around $27 a month. This seems a rather modest amount of money, but keep in mind that this is not primarily a mining rig, but a space heater. Sо let’s consider this as a nice bonus.

The device currently costs $1,200, which is quite expensive, but hopefully costs will come down somewhat as sales increase and production becomes more scalable. For comparison, you can purchase a conventional space heater with similar capacity for roughly $700. 

If you suppose that the price of BTC will at least somewhat increase in the near future, calculating with a 5 month heating season, Heatbit can make you anywhere between $150 and $200 a year at most, meaning a net zero investment in 6 to 8 years.  

Whether Heatbit is a good deal or not, will depend on your personal preferences and future energy prices, but one thing is undoubtedly clear. While this is an interesting and innovative concept, the financials behind the idea are still too weak for the solution to be called anything near revolutionary. The long-term energy efficiency and durability of the machine is also untested, since it is a completely new product.

Similar devices

Heatbit is actually not the first cryptocurrency mining space heater. Others have also tried before, but the cost efficiency of previous devices was not good enough for even small-scale commercial sales. For example, four years ago, a French company announced its own crypto heater, called “QC1”. However, its cost of $3,600 per unit meant that it was never sold commercially on any comparable scale. 

Furthermore, it is also important to remember that a crypto heater is essentially a modified ASIC rig, and therefore suffers from the same weaknesses. For example, a popular hobby crypto mining rig, “Coinmine One”, that was used to mine ETH, became essentially useless after the Ethereum blockchain switched from PoW to PoS validation. Bitcoin is a very good bet from this perspective, as any serious change in its blockchain architecture is very unlikely in the foreseeable future.

Conclusion

The idea of using the heat generated by crypto rigs is clever, but the technology still seems to be taking its first baby steps only. Paying $1200 for a device that is essentially an untested modified ASIC rig might be a little bit too much for many people. Especially if gas prices normalize in the coming years and the cost of conventional heating stabilizes. That being said, a cryptocurrency mining space heater seems to be a cool niche product for certain applications, that could provide much higher profits as well once the price of Bitcoin grows again.

If you want to read about other devices using crypto and blockchain technologies, make sure to check out our article. We’ve made up an entire list! 

SimpleSwap reminds you that this article is provided for informational purposes only and does not provide investment advice. All purchases and cryptocurrency investments are your own responsibility.