Recently I was moved to a place that has cooler temperatures and heard about using an old ASIC miner to heat. This post explains the financial viability of using an old ASIC miner as a space heater.
Bitmain/Antminer S9 ASIC
Crypto Cloaks has a really good guide and bundle to get started with using an S9 as a space heater. Lets look at the financial viability if you were to buy their bundle compared to a space heater from a local store.
At the time of writing this post the Crypto Cloaks bundle is listed for $259, that includes the ASIC, but not the replacement fans that make the ASIC quiet. The Noctua fans are an additional $100. So we are looking at a total of $359, lets round that up to $360.
The S9 uses around 1300w, or 31.2 kWh of power a day.
The competition (A Regular Space Heater)
You can get a 1500w space heater from your local walmart , target, home depot, etc. for around $30, sometimes even cheaper.
$30 is a lot cheaper than $360, but the $30 space heater won’t make you any returns, but does that matter?
Most of these heaters are 1500w, or 36 kWh of power a day.
Heaters Compared
Where I live the electricity rates for the winter are between 8.0390 and 9.8154 cents. To make things easy lets just pick the middle number: 8.8627 cents per kWh.
We are only going to run the heaters during the winter (September-May), or 7 months.
Lets see how much each of the options above costs us per year.
- S9 ASIC: 31.2 kWh * 8.8627 / 100 is $2.76 USD per day, or $82.95 a month.
- $82.95 * 7 = $580.68 to run the ASIC for the winter.
- According to this website we would make about $29.64 in BTC a month. So 28.64 * 7 = $200.48
- Our net for the winter would be 580.68 - 200.48 = $380.20
- 1500w space heater: 36 kWh * 8.8627 / 100 is $3.19 USD per day, or $95.71 a month.
- $95.71 * 7 = $670.02 to run the heater for the winter.
Here is the equation for how much it will cost us to run the 1500w space heater vs the ASIC Bitcoin
minder: 670.02 - (580.68 - 200.48) = 289.82. So If we decide to use the ASIC Bitcoin as a space
heater it will save us $289.82 every winter, or about $41.40 per month if we run it for 7 months
in the winter. Our ROI on the initial $360 we paid for the ASIC miner is about 9 month. Not
a bad ROI, run it for one full winter and just a few month in the next winter and you will be
set to make some sats.
TLDR
Going with the Crypto Cloaks s9 Bitcoin space heater will pay for itself in about 9 months.
Assumptions:
- S9 ASIC miner price: $360
- 1500w space heater price: $30
- Electricity cost: 8.8627 cents per kWh.
- Only run the heaters for 7 months during the winter.
Further Thoughts:
- What is the opportunity costs of putting ~ $330 into a ASIC miner rather than inviting it?
- What is the ROI if you buy the s9 miner, fans, 3d printerd case and esembly yourself?
- The 1500w heater is simplier and brand new, I assume it will last longer than the ASIC miner.