Latest use for bitcoin mining rig heat: Laundry

Forget hanging clothes on the line — use a bitcoin miner to heat your dryer and earn sats at the same time.

Twitter user Rev.Hodl advocated for just that on Wednesday. He tweeted a video showcasing his miner attached to his dryer as he was running a load of laundry. Instead of using the dryer’s heating element, he swapped it out for a miner, which creates heat as a byproduct.

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In a separate Thursday post on Nostr, Rev.Hodl said he’s aiming to tap into energy sources already in use to mine bitcoin. 

“My approach to mining is to take any electric heat source I am already using and use a miner to create that heat instead,” he wrote. “The mining on its own isn’t profitable but when capturing the value of the heat as well, all [of] the sudden the appliances and applications become much more efficient.

Rev.Hodl told Blockworks he’s been a homesteader since 2015, meaning he strives to be self-sufficient and lives off the land. 

Short-term rentals on the property have produced a potential bonus for bitcoin mining. 

“In my situation I am running the dryer more than the average household,” he said. “For me, the electric dryer was one of my biggest energy expenses, and it is running often, so it made a lot of sense to use the Bitcoin miner and recover some of the power cost in the form of sats and at the same time participate in the Bitcoin network.”

It’s not the first time a homegrown miner’s excess heat has been redirected to power another purpose. 

Bathhouse in Brooklyn, New York, received quite a bit of buzz back in June as details spread of the spa’s practice of warming water using heat produced by mining rigs. As the water cools, it’s recycled back to the miners to be warmed up once again. 

Rev.Hodl turns off the miner when he’s not doing laundry, so it doesn’t idly consume energy. 

Jameson Lopp, an American software engineer and bitcoin advocate, called the use of the dryer a “neat proof of concept.”

Lopp, who is the co-founder and chief technology officer of bitcoin security provider Casa, added that any time a miner can use waste heat for other purposes, “it further increases their profitability.”

But he thought the idea might work better in a laundromat. 

“The downside in this case, as opposed to something like heating a building during winter or heating a greenhouse full of crops, is that usage of dryers is much more sporadic,” Lopp said.

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