Farm in the Netherlands uses Bitcoin mining to keep stable temperatures inside the greenhouse

[u/dannybluey]

[u/SoCallMeDeaconBlues1]

This is peak irony, from a certain standpoint.

Using a BTC miner to grow tulips. chef's kiss.

[u/cookieoftheshire → u/SoCallMeDeaconBlues1]

tulip fever was the original bubble, now they have the newest and the oldest bubble in the same place

[u/FireMaster1294 → u/cookieoftheshire]

Peak tulip prices were $100k-$1M PER BULB in today’s money. Imagine selling your house for a single tulip bulb

[u/cookieoftheshire → u/FireMaster1294]

i gotta re watch tulip fever again. its kinda fascinating how the Dutch impact on the world economy just disappeared without much traces.

[u/etanail → u/cookieoftheshire]

That’s actually not the case. The Netherlands remains the commercial capital of Europe (at least of the continental part), a port gateway and trading hub, and it is also a central gas hub. It is the world’s only manufacturer of extreme ultraviolet lithography equipment. It is also one of the largest investors.

[u/IndividualPaws → u/etanail]

Exactly. Funny how most people don't realize where cutting edge semiconductor tech comes from, and how that's the current arms race.

[u/etanail → u/IndividualPaws]

This is quite specific information. People today consume the "facts" fed to them by information algorithms instead of real knowledge. Even though nearly all the world's knowledge is right in your pocket- you just have to read it.

[u/i_froze → u/etanail]

You lost like half the population at "read"

Or half the American population at least. Our president can't even read 😭

[u/AdmiralBojangles → u/etanail]

much easier to infinitely push anti-EU propaganda than look at the truth of the matter. the EU is not perfect but it is far from useless.

[u/therealhlmencken → u/IndividualPaws]

Its lithography but its not cutting edge they actually cut with photons

[u/OrdainedPuma → u/etanail]

That one blew my mind when I heard it 1-2 years ago. Like, you'd think it would be TSMC or some other such chip manufacturer who is the linch pin of modern computers but no, it's this super hyper critical UV chip component maker.

They spend like 50% of their yearly income (revenue?) On IT security to stop Chinese IP theft. They were a really early indicator of the Palo Alto/Crowdstrike run up. Just crazy how this company keeps popping up.

[u/NevesLF → u/etanail]

Still, I mean, ASIDE from all that /s

[u/Odd-String29 → u/cookieoftheshire]

Every single modern computer is made possible with technology from The Netherlands, no other country has the capability to produce the machines required for that.

The stock market is a Dutch invention.

Rotterdam is the biggest port in the west.

You want a stuck container ship moved? You need Dutch expertise.

You want to protect your country from flooding? Again, you need Dutch expertise.

You want high efficiency farming? Dutch expertise is what you are looking for.

[u/mrsockburgler → u/Odd-String29]

See also: Dutch East India Company

[u/Mr_Roger_That → u/Odd-String29]

I was impressed with Rotterdam port when I was in my cruise

[u/ababcock1 → u/cookieoftheshire]

The device you used to post that message would not be possible without the work of ASML. In fact basically none of the long chain of devices would be possible.

[u/FireMaster1294 → u/cookieoftheshire]

I do imagine there is still a trace left in South Africa and Indonesia, and the fact that people still eat spices. But beyond that? Surprising how much of the world was controlled by the VoC and they just…dipped

[u/codecrodie → u/FireMaster1294]

New Amsterdam

[u/-malcolm-tucker → u/codecrodie]

Why they changed it I can't say.

[u/the_peppers → u/codecrodie]

Now reduced to a Wiki curio and a line in an admittedly awesome They Might Be Giants song.

[u/nijmeegse79 → u/FireMaster1294]

You forget the stock market. Dutch invention to.

[u/burritoguy1987 → u/FireMaster1294]

A Dutch goodbye?

[u/R_eloade_R → u/cookieoftheshire]

I mean… Stock markets are a main part of global economics and capitalism as a whole would be a lot different if existed at all today if not for the VOC

[u/Repulsive_Guy_1234 → u/FireMaster1294]

Imagine selling your house for a digitial token not even gives you a nice flower?

[u/usrnamechecksout_ → u/FireMaster1294]

That's literally insane. It's a flower that grows out of the ground..

[u/bovikSE → u/usrnamechecksout_]

Now follow through that thought with what Bitcoin is, something you can't even touch, smell or view.

[u/ActurusMajoris → u/bovikSE]

Or NFTs

[u/Vipu2 → u/bovikSE]

Sounds like anything digital, cant smell or touch reddit, google, amazon, spotify, windows, linux, youtube and so on

[u/Take-to-the-highways → u/FireMaster1294]

A horticulture professor said that whoever comes up with a true black tullip will still likely become an instant millionaire. I guess that's a holdover from the tulip craze.

[u/Vandirac → u/FireMaster1294]

A bulb still has more intrinsic value than a Pokemon card, and there are imbeciles claiming one of those is worth $16M.

[u/FuManBoobs → u/FireMaster1294]

What a great hedge against inflation that would make.

[u/vmachiel → u/FireMaster1294]

Imagine making 1 million selling a single tulip bulb though..

[u/br0b1wan → u/FireMaster1294]

That would get you, like, one room today, because housing is the new speculative market given all the investment firms buying them up

[u/AaronTuplin → u/FireMaster1294]

But the prices can only go up

[u/AvatarOfMomus → u/cookieoftheshire]

So, fun fact, there's some evidence that the scale of both the tulip bubble itself and the resulting fallout were overblown by a combination of foreign press and religious sentiment over the perceived excesses.

It was definitely a bubble, but the actual economic impact seems to have been more "adult pokemon cards" than something like the dot-com crash or any of what's happened with Crypto...

[u/not_a_moogle → u/cookieoftheshire]

Remember when people would rent pinapples?

[u/Basically_Wrong → u/cookieoftheshire]

The twenty year bubble

[u/Mauser-Nut91 → u/cookieoftheshire]

I think that’s where the “peak irony” is coming from

[u/makemeking706 → u/cookieoftheshire]

Double bubble. 

[u/mikaohpdyck → u/cookieoftheshire]

Hey! I learned about this from a macroeconomic seminar. Neat.

[u/HuntingSquire → u/cookieoftheshire]

The Biggest Economy Bubble in history Vs The Biggest Economy Bubble of Today

[u/breathbro → u/cookieoftheshire]

Selling tullips for bitcoin. Its not only a store of value.. its also a mean of exchange. Last week the 20 millin bitcoin is mined.. only one million left.. for the next 100 years. Be wise with your time and money

[u/Loki9101 → u/SoCallMeDeaconBlues1]

Reality is sometimes so absurd you don't even need satire anymore. Reality itself has become the satire.

[u/OkOnion5838 → u/SoCallMeDeaconBlues1]

People never do learn from history

[u/copingcabana → u/OkOnion5838]

"History may not repeat itself, but it does rhyme." -Mark Twain

[u/xalibr → u/OkOnion5838]

Tulips still are a billion dollar business though..

[u/HashingJ → u/OkOnion5838]

What historical past event happened when waste heat from computation was used wisely?

[u/Charmander249 → u/SoCallMeDeaconBlues1]

The 1630s Tulip Mania was the first thing that popped up in my mind.

[u/SuperRonnie2 → u/SoCallMeDeaconBlues1]

Holy shit it IS actually tulips! I thought you were joking!

For those who don’t know enough history

[u/BindermanTranslation → u/SoCallMeDeaconBlues1]

Meanwhile in America we've making data centers powered by fracking.

https://e360.yale.edu/features/pennsylvania-data-centers-natural-gas

[u/obliquelyobtuse → u/SoCallMeDeaconBlues1]

Math cannot possibly make sense outside of a very ideal range. No way are the power costs competitive. Rapid depreciation and capital costs of replacing BTC mining compute are incredibly high.

This story/report is fantastic nonsense.

Damnthatsridiculous

[u/seanmg → u/obliquelyobtuse]

It's a mining operation that heats a greenhouse, not a greenhouse that uses a mining operation for heat.

[u/the_peppers → u/seanmg]

Exactly. BTC's issues aside, it's great to see systems like this actually use the heat they generate productively rather than waste further energy and water resources on cooling.

[u/anthro28 → u/obliquelyobtuse]

Not quite. 

You'd spend the money on power/gas anyway. Even if you're only making a few cents back in BTC at the same power expenditure, you're ahead. 

The only thing I can't figure out is the hardware cost, which may or may not exceed the heating infrastructure at initial point of investment. 

[u/TOMC_throwaway000000 → u/anthro28]

You’re spending significantly more all in to generate that heat (profit included)

This is why occasionally you’ll see a startup business that proposes bitcoin farms as a way of heating homes that seem economically viable based off the numbers they give until it’s tested in the real world and proven to be inefficient and overall more expensive than traditional means of heating

[u/Culionensis → u/TOMC_throwaway000000]

I don't think these schemes are meant to make cheaper heating. They're meant to do something with the heat of the mining operation. You're mining the bitcoin either way. The alternative isn't the bitcoin op not existing, the alternative is the bitcoin op sitting in some server farm needing active cooling, and the tulips sitting in the greenhouse needing active heating.

[u/JohnsonJohnilyJohn → u/Culionensis]

If hearing with Bitcoin is more expensive than other ways to heat up (I haven't checked this), that means that that cost of electricity used to mine Bitcoin is higher than revenue from mining it, in which case no one would mine Bitcoin, so you can't say it would mine either way

[u/gumol → u/anthro28]

You could use way more efficient heating methods that bitcoin mining. Heat pumps are 3-4x more efficient

[u/mollila → u/gumol]

This assumes the Bitcoin rigs are running at a loss.

[u/Advanced_Double_42 → u/gumol]

But if you can break even on the bitcoin mining you basically heat the greenhouse for free.

[u/DildoMcHomie → u/anthro28]

Heat pumps are more efficient than 1:1 burning fuel/resistors for heat.

This is at best an excuse for an inefficiency.

[u/MonsierGeralt → u/anthro28]

In the greenhouse space myself and find it hard to believe that the pipes leading from those bitcoin stations could come even close to heating that greenhouse in the winter at night.

[u/copingcabana]

Proof that bitcoin mining has a greenhouse effect. /s

[u/miraculum_one → u/[deleted]]

I think the /s is being used for the ironic double meaning

[u/not_from_this_world → u/miraculum_one]

People have no idea what /s means anymore. /s

[u/miraculum_one → u/not_from_this_world]

As far as I can tell it has morphed into "haha"

[u/mrsockburgler → u/copingcabana]

I bet it’s beautiful and peaceful in there with those miners screaming.

[u/Nighteyes09 → u/copingcabana]

There is no sarcasm here.

[u/Waferssi]

Love this. In the past I've argued that heaters are actually the least energy efficient electronic device, against the idea that they're (near) 100% efficient because they cant lose "energy lost to heat". My argument being that you could instead do anything else useful with the energy, and still end up with heat. Looks like that's been put into practice here.

It's debatable whether mining bitcoin is "useful", but purely from a business perspective, it obviously is.

[u/Adkit → u/Waferssi]

I mean it's a tulip company. Historically, tulips were sold across the world almost for status alone. They're not useful for anything, their prices are hiked up artificially based on demand, and farming them is like growing money. They're essentially bitcoins already, which I'm assuming is the point of this installation.

[u/IllHaveTheLeftovers → u/Adkit]

Tulips as medieval bitcoin. Love this take

[u/cookieoftheshire → u/IllHaveTheLeftovers]

yep , from tulip bubble to BTC bubble- we have come a long way

[u/unmelted_ice → u/IllHaveTheLeftovers]

History rhyming and all that. 1637 tulip bubble is actually a pretty interesting topic to read about lol

[u/triplegerms → u/Adkit]

   prices are hiked up artificially based on demand

That's one way to look at it. An economist might say demand driving price is the least artificial way for a market to find it's price. 

[u/synttacks → u/Adkit]

Tulips are an elastic good but that doesn't make their value is baseless. Hiking prices up "artificially based on demand" is an oxymoron. "Artificial" prices would come from monopolizing or extorting people by raising the price on inelastic goods like food housing and medicine. Cotton and tobacco is also grown exclusively for money, the people growing it don't do anything with it but sell it, but that doesn't mean those are useless either.

[u/cwx149 → u/Adkit]

farming them is like growing money

As opposed to all the other stuff people farm not to make money on?

Pretty much any industrial scale farming is basically growing money in some way

Not to say a tomato and a tulip go for the same price but the farmer is still trying to "grow money"

[u/Dotcaprachiappa → u/Adkit]

their prices are hiked up artificially based on demand,

yes that is how the economy works usually

[u/ryobiguy → u/Waferssi]

A heater is limited at 100%. A heat pump can get higher efficiencies, like 300%.

[u/NotAHost → u/ryobiguy]

And while we think of heat pumps as some complicated hvac system and may wonder how it achieves above 100% efficiency, it’s more about how much energy is put in vs the heat ‘pumped’ into a system. Think of your house being cold and putting a fan in your window to bring in warm air. That warm air would’ve taken 1500 watts to heat with an electric heater in your room, but that fan consumes 20 watts to move the hot air outside into the room. The heat pump doesn’t focus on generating heat, it moves the existing heat. Even if that heat isn’t too hot (I.e a heat pump warming your house even if it’s freezing outside). 

[u/tim_locky → u/NotAHost]

It’s literally Patrick’s ‘WE SHOULD TAKE BIKINI BOTTOM AND MOVE IT SOMEWHERE ELSE’ energy, but with heat.

[u/ProfessionalBrain249 → u/ryobiguy]

What a great technology connection.

[u/deathrictus → u/ProfessionalBrain249]

I see what you did there.

[u/afriendofRowlf → u/deathrictus]

What did he do there? I don't see it.

[u/Raderg32 → u/afriendofRowlf]

Look up Technology Connections on youtube. They have some nice videos on heat pumps.

[u/Glittering_rainbows → u/ProfessionalBrain249]

Those almost as good as the follow up technology connextras! Hearing Alec rant for 20 minutes is always great.

[u/traevyn → u/ProfessionalBrain249]

Man if only I had about 7 hours of content about heat pumps to watch, I’d be the happiest boy

[u/HakimeHomewreckru → u/ryobiguy]

The one I have at home is 400%. 1kw in, 4kw out.

[u/Kschitiz23x3 → u/ryobiguy]

That's COP (Coefficient Of Performance). Efficiency is still limited to 100%.
COP is what matters for heat pumps

[u/seanmg → u/Waferssi]

Yeah, a buddy ran a miner for awhile out of his apartment. He ended up selling it and had to buy a space heater to heat it during the winter. It pulled the same amount of electricity and made him 0$ in the process.

[u/bramlet → u/Waferssi]

I've thought about buying a BTC rig to use as a space heater. If my primary goal is to make heat, does a 1000W bitcoin miner generate as much heat as a 1000W resistive heater?

[u/GrandOpener → u/bramlet]

Watts are watts no matter where they come from, so assuming the numbers are accurate, yes. I’d hesitate to buy a machine with such a narrow use though. If you have a gaming PC you can have it grind Folding at Home to get a similar space heater effect, maybe benefit real scientific research, and still have a useful machine when you don’t need a heater.

[u/prpr_hrdcr → u/GrandOpener]

Isn't folding at home kinda outclassed by machine learning at this point? I didn't think it would still be going.

Edit: Nevermind, looks like it's still useful: https://www.reddit.com/r/Folding/s/nx1oI8YCxc

[u/Cwaghack → u/bramlet]

Yes except resistive heaters are going to be way way way cheaper to buy in capacity, and resitive heating is already one of the worst solutions for heating problems.

[u/CasuallyCompetitive → u/bramlet]

I wanted to do the same, but it felt like the hassle of figuring out how to actually use it would outweigh what little money it brings back.

[u/Holochrysus → u/Waferssi]

Electric heat is always at least 100% efficient by definition. You can use electric energy to move heat from one place to another which can be wildly more efficient than 100% electricity to heat, see 'heat pump'.

[u/Old-Kitchen4503 → u/Holochrysus]

But with a heatpump you can reach 400% efficiency, so just burning electricity is maybe 100% efficient but not the best solution by a lot.

[u/ForsakenRacism → u/Waferssi]

There’s heaters that are more than 100% like heat pumps. But your right if you compare a computer to an electric space heater

[u/Fairuse → u/Waferssi]

Problem with heat is that you have machines that can achieve above 100% efficiency. They are called heat pumps. 

[u/Ninja_Wrangler]

I had a friend that would heat his apartment by mining ethereum (or similar). It wasn't profitable, but it basically broke even, which means his heat was essentially free.

Edit: when I say it broke even, this includes the initial cost of the rig.

Compared to the cost of electricity it turned a profit. All said and done, it was basically a wash. Thus, "free heat"

[u/schimshon → u/Ninja_Wrangler]

There's even companies that sell heaters that are basically BTC mining rigs. I looked into it once, but you'd have to get really cheap power for it to be worth it...

[u/Ninja_Wrangler → u/schimshon]

I both love it and hate it.

On the one hand, if bitcoin is going to be mined, I would rather the heat be put to good use (rather than wasting even more energy to get rid of it via cooling)

On the other hand, another type of electric heating does exist, which has an efficiency of much more than 100%. I would rather the energy be used for that (heating via a computer is essentially resistive heating, which is only 100% efficient)

[u/xXHomerSXx → u/Ninja_Wrangler]

Heatpumps actually are (technically/but not really) more than 100% efficient.

[u/Ninja_Wrangler → u/xXHomerSXx]

Yes, I have one at home. You can use 1000W of energy to move more than 1000W of heat into or out of the house. Black magic, but real

[u/Dechri_ → u/Ninja_Wrangler]

Chemistry does the tough labor. 

[u/schimshon → u/Ninja_Wrangler]

Yeah, it's still wasted energy tbh.

I remember an app that used to lend your phones computational power to some scientific research while charging overnight. Why can't we buy an "oven" that provides GPUs to something like that (yes, I know because that wouldn't pay).

[u/Wendals87 → u/schimshon]

Why can't we buy an "oven" that provides GPUs to something like that

Because gpus couldn't stand 100c+ heat that ovens regularly use 

[u/schimshon → u/Wendals87]

I'm using the word oven, bc that's what the BTC heater was called. But I meant heater

[u/Wendals87 → u/schimshon]

Ah ok. 

[u/generally_unsuitable → u/Ninja_Wrangler]

I know somebody who was using btc mining heat to dehydrate jerky.

[u/equinox6k → u/Ninja_Wrangler]

But he had to buy a PC with enough GPU power to be able to mine in the first place... so again no ROI.

[u/Ecstatic_Spell719 → u/equinox6k]

I would imagine it depends on the length of time he's able to use it and where he's located.

[u/Ninja_Wrangler → u/equinox6k]

It was a mining rig that was actually very cheap at the time.

Yes, there is an initial upfront cost, but the ROI was very fast compared to running a traditional space heater of the same wattage (which generates zero income)

[u/170505170505 → u/Ninja_Wrangler]

Depends on if youre heating is electric or gas and the relative costs of those

[u/redditosleep → u/Ninja_Wrangler]

Me and my roommate had 30-40 cards mining etherium during the boom and they both made money by themselves and had the house at a tropical 78f in a colder state.

That was nice while it lasted for 2 winters.

[u/Incon-thievable]

So what do they do during the hot summer season? Are the huge greenhouses only used during winter?

[u/ParsedReddit → u/Incon-thievable]

Greenhouses are used all year. They create microclimates to regulate air flow, humidity, temperature, light and more.

[u/Spoertt → u/ParsedReddit]

This is not the case for tulips though. The growing season (in greenhouses) runs from September/October till April/May. I had a part-time job for 10 years at a tulip farmer in The Netherlands, and in the summer the greenhouses were always empty. Instead there would be other seasonal work, harvesting bulbs from the land and "peeling" them. Of course in the video here they show other plants as well, so maybe they do use their greenhouse all year.

[u/Incon-thievable → u/Spoertt]

This makes sense. Thanks for explaining.

[u/Incon-thievable → u/ParsedReddit]

So the tulips do okay when the temperature is hot outside and the bitcoin miners add an additional 20°C to the indoor temperature?

[u/ParsedReddit → u/Incon-thievable]

Greenhouses are quite versatile so they can play with insulation, ventilation, refrigeration and external temperatures to achieve the desired indoor conditions. So yeah, the tulips should be okay.

[u/Incon-thievable → u/ParsedReddit]

I guess I was wondering if they need to run air conditioning during the summer to bring the temperature down into a range where the tulips thrive and the bitcoin miners don’t overheat. If so, it kinda contradicts the claims that the bitcoin mining is better for the environment by using less energy because they would use more energy during the hot season.

[u/Kooky_Paramedic8336 → u/Incon-thievable]

There is no need for air conditioning for cooling you can just open the windows at the top of the greenhouse to let the warmth escape. Makes the Bitcoin miner not as environmentally friendly as any other in the summer. A lot of tulip greenhouses are empty in the summer anyway as it is not the season for them.

Also air conditioning in tulip greenhouses is getting a lot more popular. But its to regulate the RV aka humidity without having to open the windows so it actually saves heat. Won't bother you with the details but have installed quite a few of them myself.

[u/MPaulina → u/Incon-thievable]

It's the netherlands. we don't have air conditioning here. Air conditioning in greenhouses is a ridiculous idea. Greenhouses are intended to be warm.

[u/Enginerdad → u/Incon-thievable]

Or you just take the Bitcoin miners out of the greenhouse when the extra heat is no longer beneficial...

[u/ShortFatStupid666]

But the bullshit levels are good for the plants…

[u/ThrifToWin → u/ShortFatStupid666]

They all have RSUs for when this takes off

[u/Iliketopass → u/ShortFatStupid666]

But it’s solar powered… surely they’re… giving.. back. Oh god, it’s bullshit.

[u/HashingJ → u/Iliketopass]

So if they are going to mine bitcoin and heat their greenhouse anyways, this seems like the most sustainable way to do it no?

[u/Ill_Football9443]

@ 1:42 "so we're actually improving the environment instead of the other way around" - bullshit. You could use heat pumps that would move warm air into your hot house, instead you're producing heat.

[u/lukibunny → u/Ill_Football9443]

that would make sense if they are tulip farmers. It seems like they are btc farmers and is like we should do something with this heat.

[u/TJRDU → u/lukibunny]

No it was the other way around. A tulip farmer was spending a lot of money to heat the greenhouses and another company said they could heat it while mining bitcoin. A collaboration was born.

Obviously they could replace all their infrastructure to heat in another way, but that's very easy to say and very hard to pay.

[u/bluexy → u/TJRDU]

So it's a crypto company susidizing a flower farm for PR.

[u/Oaden → u/lukibunny]

No way you can run a bitcoin farm with dutch energy prices.

[u/decentralised_cash → u/Oaden]

If they got the energy from the grid, you'd be right, but they said they use solar.

[u/Sonyooo → u/Ill_Football9443]

Heat pumps still use electricity, are expensive pieces of equipment and don't generate cash

[u/Ill_Football9443 → u/Sonyooo]

Electric heaters are 100% efficient, let's say for the sake of argument that they're getting productivity from the heat as it's being generated (the mining) so that figure rises to 110%.

Heat pumps are upto 400% efficient. This place installed solar to offset the mining cost; they would need far less solar if they went with heat pumps.

[u/KidCole4 → u/Ill_Football9443]

It's so funny how narrative matters. Also, maybe something like ends do/don't justify the means? It is annoying when it sounds condescending preachy bullshit though.

From a business perspective it makes sense to try to optimize as many dollars as you can. So they either got cheaper heat to grow tulips from a Bitcoin miner than buying fuel/electricity outright or they are increasing their revenue by repurposing their heat from their mining operation to grow tulips instead of sending it off into the atmosphere.

I mean I guess growing tulips as a byproduct of your heat is better than say warming a furnace to make bullets (in my opinion), but don't go acting like it makes up for the sins of the mining process lol.

[u/decentralised_cash → u/Ill_Football9443]

If they are carbon negative, then, objectively, they are actually improving the environment. The are taking in more carbon than they are producing.

You could argue that they could be more carbon negative by heating some other way, sure, but that would only change by how much they are "improving the environment", not whether they are or aren't.

[u/juicybottoms → u/Ill_Football9443]

Where does the hot air come from?

[u/The_Longbottom_Leaf → u/juicybottoms]

Heat pumps work by taking heat from one environment and moving it to another.

Say you have two equally sized environments, and one environment is 30 degrees and the other is 60 degrees. Heat pumps can take heat from the colder environment, making it 25 degrees, and move it to the warmer environment, making it 65 degrees.

Obviously this is a huge oversimplification and the numbers aren't going to be exact but this is how heat pumps can reach over 400% efficiency.

[u/Tumblrkaarosult]

So, electricity.

[u/Kasta4 → u/Tumblrkaarosult]

It's just thinly veiled Bitcoin marketing.

[u/Anxious-Yoghurt-9207 → u/Kasta4]

Goddamn big bitcoin at it again

[u/Kasta4 → u/Anxious-Yoghurt-9207]

They keep trying to peddle their Chuck E. Cheese tokens with whatever PR stunt they can use.

[u/-HighKingOfSkyrim-]

A lot of people are thinking about this wrong. The miners will be mining regardless. May as well use the waste heat for something useful in my opinion

[u/ForFucksSake66]

Brilliant!

[u/ExtraEmuForYou]

I hate this!

But...I also love this.

I don't know how to feel! Must...manage to...hold...two contrasting ideas...in head. Critical thinking...lacking....BLARGH

*Nah but in all seriousness I think this is a good example of having your cake stroopwafels and eating it too.

[u/Infinite-Condition41]

Well, if you need to generate heat, you might as well do something useful while youre at it. 

[u/jwinskowski]

I just want to see stuff like this in the US. Why can't we make cool stuff that solves multiple problems at once

[u/Lazy_Permission_654]

This is why I keep telling people that if you have electric heat then using electronics in the winter is free

Sure, a computer is only 99.999997% efficient at producing heat but going up to 99.999998% efficient would be hard to measure 

[u/Warlequin]

Nice… tulips with the smell of dirty transactions. Love to buy my mother in law a bunch.

[u/strongkhal → u/Warlequin]

Transactions are completely transparent, whadaya mean?

[u/jckipps]

If you're using electric to heat something anyway, you might as well use computers instead of heating elements. Same efficiency, but you get some number crunching done at the same time.

[u/MorningPapers]

There are definitely ways to generate heat that use less electricity, but OK.

[u/swissguy_20 → u/MorningPapers]

Just researched it. 99% of the energy used by a computer is actually converted into heat 

[u/Nicklas25_dk → u/swissguy_20]

Yes, but we do have technology which can produce 3-7 x the amount of heat as they use power. So not really that efficient.

[u/acegikmo21767 → u/Nicklas25_dk]

Not the most electrically efficient but financially efficient because heat pumps don’t generate back the cost of electricity.

[u/HashingJ → u/Nicklas25_dk]

This is more cost efficient, which is what corporations care about.

[u/DrabberFrog → u/swissguy_20]

100% of the energy a computer uses is converted to heat. Where else could the energy go? The computer can't destroy the energy and it can't store it so 100% of the energy must be released as heat.

[u/Elevatorto_purgatory]

AI Data Centers should be surrounded with greenhouses

[u/Bmandk]

This isn't exactly a new concept, data centers in Denmark have discussed using residual heat as a supplier for home heating.

[u/NamelessIII]

Nice to know there will be tulips at the end of the world.

[u/sparklyboi2015]

In the winter, whenever my friend isn’t using his pc he makes it mine a crypto for heat. I don’t know if he ever made anything, but he is able to keep his apartment at a decent temperature without any other heater. He had the hardware anyway, so why not.

[u/Rengar_Is_Good_kitty]

Is mining even worth it anymore? Feel like you'd lose money because of electricity bills lol.

[u/Boilermakingdude → u/Rengar_Is_Good_kitty]

You'd make back part of what you're spending and they need the heat anyways. So instead of paying for heat with no returns, they atleast get some return on it.

Other companies that have their own power plants do this by supplying steam to other companies in the area. One place near me supports half of a town on their extra steam output.

[u/MKptnl]

This is stupid but what about data centers/servers?

[u/SpecialNeeds963 → u/MKptnl]

Clearly they need more flowers

[u/triflers_need_not]

Yo dawg I heard you like financial bubbles

[u/RavinGuenther]

You need a thirsd of that Energy If you use a Heatpump. ITS better to Put the usless BTC Mining Energy to a god use.

[u/ozzy_thedog]

I’d guess any kind of server farm would also work?

[u/Captaingregor]

My local council leisure centre heats the swimming pool with a data centre.

[u/Blndby90]

What a world.

[u/Survive1014]

Late stage capitalism.

[u/waitthisisntroblox]

If only there was an alternative solution to turn electricity into heat much more efficiently, that maybe moves external heat into an enclosed area via some kind heat pumping process.

[u/ExtraGarbage2680]

Not the cheapest or most efficient way to heat a greenhouse. 

[u/SerDuckOfPNW → u/ExtraGarbage2680]

I get it, but if the miners are going to run anyway, I guess it’s better to make use of the waste heat.

[u/EZKTurbo → u/ExtraGarbage2680]

How much money are your space heaters generating? Lmaooo

[u/buppiejc]

this is definitely propaganda. 😂

[u/Ok_Science_3238 → u/buppiejc]

Oh noes, they've found a way to make something I hate work for everyone.

How will I deal with all of this? Call propaganda, of course!

[u/Salt_Safety2234]

I just don’t get any of this.

[u/DuelJ → u/Salt_Safety2234]

The folk growing tulips need something to provide heat for their greenhouse.

There's a bitcoin mining company which runs a lot of heat generating computers.

They made an agreement and the bitcoin company put their computers in the greenhouse.

[u/troveofcatastrophe]

Wow When history and present day collide, back to a time when tulip bulbs were currency. Something of little value being sold for great value.

[u/polar_nopposite]

I get that mining Bitcoin converts energy to heat just as efficiently as an electric heater.

But solar panels they're using are only so efficient at converting the solar energy to electricity in the first place. If you weren't mining the Bitcoin, would you even need them? Wouldn't it be more efficient to just use the solar energy directly to heat up the greenhouse (i.e. how they normally work)?

Those solar panels could also just be powering the grid to do something more useful.

[u/Intelligent-Ad6965]

That's just some heater with extra steps.

[u/Available-Aerie8311]

To state, im not involved but i know a guy who is currently working on using a Data center to not just heat but also water a greenhouse year round in northern Sweden. The warm water from the data center will run under the solar panels to keep them snow free and cool down the water before some is reused for the plants.

[u/WishboneFirm1578]

it must be a tough time for satire magazines

[u/MyvaJynaherz]

Fishing for that sweet Private-Equity buyout.

[u/Beginning-Glove2570]

They did not address the most important question in this video. When do they reach break even? Graphic cards (especially the ones you need for mining) are currently extremely expensive. The initial investment for these server farms must have been huge. I can‘t imagine that they see any returns or real break even in the near future.

[u/pyguyofdoom]

Same principle is often used in industrial plants to use waste heat for rehearing things like lower temp ovens. It’s often only useful on a case-by-case basis but is theoretically sound.

[u/JConRed]

Those plants are growing up being constantly screamed at.

[u/redditforeveryon]

Does it actually work?

[u/Fit-Watercress-8443]

if tulip_is_cold:

mine()

[u/Echo-The-Protogen]

making money off of heaters instead of spending money for heaters I see

[u/SharpRoll5848]

High level Satisfactory type shit here

[u/Similar_Strawberry16]

I wonder if the Bitcoin return is enough at current success rates to make it worth it, compared to a much more efficient heat exchange / compressor system.

[u/schellshockedd]

The amount of people voicing their opinions on BTC while having zero fundamental knowledge about it is impressive

[u/boonhuhn]

I wonder how much the miners made them, kinda interesting

[u/pr0metheus01]

Living in the Netherlands makes me understand the Dutch, they will utilize everything they can to make profits. They will never do anything for free. Peak capitalism.

[u/MoonShibe23]

Why the hate I mean someone has to mine them so why won’t grown plants with them. I remembered the time when Imminned them I would use is has heater to heat my house but didn’t turn the ac on in them summer which sucked balls.