After the first 20 minutes, the water temperature seemed to rise at a relatively constant rate of 0.0006°C per second. This increase in temperature means an increase in thermal energy, which we can calculate as follows:
here m The mass of the material (water in this case) is and C Specific heat capacity is the amount of heat energy required to raise the temperature of that substance by 1 degree Celsius. for water, C It is 4.186 J/g/°C. So, with 1000ml of water and my rate of temperature change, I find that the water requires 2.51 joules per second (or 2.51 watts).
Oh, look at that. Even with this rudimentary measurement system, that’s pretty close to the power going into a Raspberry Pi. This difference is probably due to incomplete insulation. So you can see that the power of digital currency is only thermal energy. Honestly, I was surprised that it worked so well.
Show me the money!
Although you might start a crypto miner as a way to heat your house, that’s probably not why people do it. What is the benefit? Well, let’s do some quick math. I ran my Raspberry Pi mine for 12 hours. How much money did it generate? Wait… 0.00000006 XMR. Converting this to US dollars, it is 0.0012 cents (nine dollars). Yes, it will be a slow way to accumulate wealth. If I ran it for 12,000 hours, I still wouldn’t be able to buy a piece of gum. He probably didn’t even use gum.
And that’s not even counting the cost. I mean, mining isn’t free—you have to pay for electricity. The average cost of electricity in the United States is 16.94 cents per kWh. If I run my miner at 3W for 12 hours, that would be 24Wh or 0.024kWh. Using electricity prices, this cost would be 0.41 cents. Let me just do some quick math here. Yes, that’s 0.41 cents more than the money I made. I’m no financial expert, but that sounds like a bad business model.
Of course, no one but a physicist will mine crypto on a Raspberry Pi. There are fancy mining machines (costing thousands of dollars) that allow you to mine coins faster and with less energy. Another thing to consider is the future price of a digital currency. Even if the cost exceeds the reward today, it may be worth much more someday. Finally, a crypto miner can be located in a location with cheaper electricity. It is even possible to run a miner with solar energy.
However, don’t forget that for every joule of energy you put into the miner, you generate 1 joule of thermal energy. You need to get rid of that heat or it will cause problems for your computer. But cooling systems consume more energy and this can make it difficult to generate profitable currency.
But it should work, because there is a lot of mining in the United States. In 2024, it was estimated that 2.3% of electrical energy will be spent on digital currencies. It’s a small amount, and I’m not really sure it’s the best use of our energy resource – especially since cryptocurrency is just a dummy thing.
