With an always-fluctuating market and a variety of new coins being introduced every day, there are a lot of factors to consider if you’re thinking about entering the world of cryptocurrency. If you want to mine the bitcoin yourself instead of just buying in with US dollars, there’s a whole other set of complications that you have to be aware of.
Here’s a reductive explanation of bitcoin mining: You can set up your computer hardware to do calculations for the bitcoin blockchain, and in return, you get some bitcoin. If you want a stronger explanation than that, Coindesk has a more extensive primer on the subject. One problem miners face is that the specialized hardware, known as ASICs, can get pretty darn hot, enough so that it can become a problem. So, how do you deal with all that heat?Reddit user gta3uzi (whose name is Lee, as Motherboard notes) came up with a clever solution: He used the heat to heat up his bath water. This sounds like a good idea, but it actually worked too well, as the water in his tub reached a piping 122 degrees Fahrenheit. The good news is that he found an even more practical use for the heat: He diverted the heat into his HVAC system to heat his home, which he says got rid of his $80 heating bill during the winter. Lee answers a ton of questions and gets into more technical specifics about his rig in the comments of the Reddit post, so check that out here if you want to read more.
What other creative uses can you think of using bitcoin-generated heat for? Let us know what you think down in the comments!
Featured image: Many Wonderful Artists/Flickr
