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.