Recently I have written about how Bitcoin and really cryptocurrency mining might now be as energy-intensive as physically printing money. When looking at this I stumbled across an article that at first I thought was a joke but it really got me thinking. It was an article on Coindesk called "Mining Bitcoin for Heat, Strawberries and Chickens" and can be found here. In essence, a farm in Canada is using Bitcoin mining to keep their strawberries at the proper temperature for growing and keeping the chicken on the farm warm too.
I could not help but read this and be stunned that such a smart and simple idea has not been utilized in other parts of the world. For instance, the idea of using heat from mining to run hydroponic and aquaponic farms immediately stuck me! As someone who loves gardening and has both purchased and built hydroponic systems not only do you have to worry about the cold but also the heat. You could in theory run these mining machines during the winter or really whenever a cold spell hits to not only warm your plants but also make some money on the side.
Now I know you have to be thinking well electricity is expensive and I would agree with you for the most part however there are places and situations this would really work. Washington state for instance has the cheapest electricity in the nation they also have a sizable population that needs food and being as cutting edge as the main cities are using this idea of mixing cutting edge food generation with cutting edge monetary heat makes sense to me. You also have places like Montana and in particular stick out to me North Dakota that need to be kept warm. North Dakota produces a lot of oil and natural gas and I wonder if there is some way that they can warm the machines with hot air generated by these systems.
It has also lead me to wonder if there was some way that heat could be funneled through a series of turbines to generate some power to either return to the grid or further fuel the rigs. While technology might not be there yet I do feel that this is a by-product we burn coal, wood, natural gas for so we should at some point be able to create ways to generate power off of this heat.
While I have found a few previous articles hypothesizing that you could do it it appears no one has been able to do it or I at least cannot find it. While the heat generated alone off the machine would not be enough to boil water if it is funneled to a place and then pressure builds up it would force a turbine to spin. Granted I did not go to school nor get my degree in anything that would deal with this type of stuff but this definitely seems to be something that could be very useful in different parts of the world for both regular citizens and farmers growing crops in the winter!
