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After the first 20 minutes, the temperature of the water seemed to rise at a fairly constant rate of 0.0006 degrees Celsius per second. This increase in temperature means that there is an increase in thermal energy, which we can calculate as:
Here m is the mass of things (in this case, water), and C is the specific heat capacity – the amount of caloric energy required to raise the temperature of that substance by 1 degree Celsius. for water, C is 4.186 joules per gram per degree Celsius. So, with 1,000 ml of water and my rate of temperature change, I figure that the water requires 2.51 joules of power every second (or 2.51 watts).
Oh look at this. Even with this rudimentary measurement system, this is pretty close to the power going into the Raspberry Pi. The difference is probably due to imperfect insulation. So you can see that cryptocurrency power 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 house, that is probably not why people 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 did it produce? Wait… 0.00000006 XMR. Convert this to US dollars, it is 0.0012 cents (not dollars). Yes, that would be a slow way to amass a fortune. If I wore it for 12,000 hours, I couldn’t even buy a piece of chewing gum. They probably haven’t used chewing gum yet.
And this is not even accounting for the cost. I mean, mining is not free – you have to pay for electricity. The average cost of electricity in the US is 16.94 cents per kilowatt-hour. If I ran my miner at 3 watts for 12 hours, that would be 24 watt-hours, or 0.024 KWh. Using the price of electricity, this cost 0.41 cents. Let me do some quick math here. Yes, 0.41 cents is more than the money I created. I’m no financial expert, but this sounds like a bad business model to me.
Of course, no one but a physicist would encrypt on a Raspberry Pi. There are fancy mining machines (costing thousands of dollars) that allow you to mint coins faster and with less energy. The other thing to consider is the future price of a cryptocurrency. Even if the cost outweighs the reward today, maybe one day it could be worth much more. Finally, a crypto miner could be in a place with the cheapest electricity. It is also possible to run a miner on solar.
However, don’t forget that for every joule of energy you put into a miner, you have to produce 1 joule of thermal energy. You have to get rid of that heat, or it will cause problems for your computers. But cooling systems use more energy, and that can make it difficult to produce profitable currency.
But it must work, since there is quite a bit of mining in the United States. In 2024, it was estimated that 2.3 percent of the electricity went into cryptocurrency. It’s a bit, and I’m really not sure it’s the best use of our energy supply, especially since crypto is just a thing.
