After the first 20 minutes, the water temperature appeared to increase at a fairly steady rate of 0.0006 °C per second. This increase in temperature means that there has been an increase in thermal energy, which we can calculate as:
Here m is the mass of the object (in this case, water), and C Specific heat capacity is the amount of heat energy required to raise the temperature of a substance by 1 degree Celsius. for water, C 4.186 joules per gram per degree Celsius. So, with 1,000 mL of water and my rate of temperature change, I figure the water requires 2.51 joules (or 2.51 watts) of power per second.
Oh, look at that. Even with this rudimentary measurement system, this is pretty close to the power going into the Raspberry Pi. This difference is probably due to imperfect insulation. So you can see that the power of cryptocurrencies is just thermal energy. Honestly, I'm surprised it worked so well.
show me the money!
Although it is possible to run a crypto miner as a way to heat your home, that's probably why people don't do it. What is the payment? Well, let's do some quick calculations. I ran my Raspberry Pi Miner for 12 hours. How much money was generated from that? Wait for it… 0.00000006 XMR. Converting it to US dollars it is 0.0012 cents (not dollars). Yes, this would be a slow way to acquire wealth. Even if I drove it for 12,000 hours, I couldn't buy a piece of chewing gum. Might not have even used chewing gum.
And this doesn't even take into account the cost. I mean, mining isn't free – you have to pay for electricity. average cost of electricity The US is 16.94 cents per kilowatt-hourIf I run my miner at 3 watts for 12 hours, that will be 24 watt-hours, or 0.024 kilowatts. Using the price of electricity, it would cost 0.41 cents. Let me do some quick math here. Yes, 0.41 cents is more money than I earned. I'm no financial expert, but this seems like a bad business model.
Of course, no one except a physicist will be doing crypto mining on a Raspberry Pi. There are fancy mining machines (costing thousands of dollars) that let you mint coins faster and with less energy. The second thing to consider is the future price of the cryptocurrency. Even if the price is higher than the reward today, it may be worth even more one day. Ultimately, a crypto miner may be in a location with cheap electricity. It is also possible to run a miner on solar power.
However, don't forget that for every joule of energy put into the miner, you are going to produce 1 joule of thermal energy. You have to get rid of that heat, otherwise it will cause problems for your computer. But cooling systems use more energy, and this can make it difficult to produce a profitable currency.
But it should work, because there is a lot of mining in the US. It was estimated that in 2024 2.3 percent of electrical energy went into cryptocurrenciesThat's a lot, and I'm not really sure it's the best use of our energy supply – especially since crypto is just a made-up thing.