What do a swimming pool, cecina, a caravan, wood, animal waste, a Guatemalan lake and a high school have in common?
They have all been saved by Bitcoin (BTC) mining. From reusing “waste” heat to get work done, to receiving a blast of cold air to dehydrate meat, to cleaning up contaminants, Bitcoin mining does more than just secure the network.
Here’s a rundown of seven times Bitcoin mining lent a helping hand or just made the world a better place.
Free Bitcoin Mining Education in Washington
Sustainable Bitcoin mining company Merkle Standard has taken Bitcoin mining education into their own hands. In partnership with Bitmain, they recently gifted the latest Bitcoin mining technology to Newport High School, a high school in Washington state.
Additionally, they donated $10,000 and are promoting Bitcoin education in the hope that they will “plant a seed that will foster lifelong interest in blockchain and digital mining.”
Along with the check, Ruslan Zinurov, CEO of Merkle Standard, told Cointelegraph that they will also invite students to their “data center to check their machine that is hashing their school wallet.” Zinurov told Cointelegraph:
“Getting the community excited about Bitcoin is our top priority and we can’t think of a better way to do that than to educate local students.”
Adam Delderfield, director of business development at Bitmain – the holding company for Bitcoin miners Antminer – told Cointelegraph: “Digital currency mining revenue from this giveaway will go directly to education,” adding that “mining Bitcoin and proof-of-work represent an exciting new industry that opens up numerous new opportunities.”
Bitcoin miner jerky cooked by chef Business Cat
The Bitcoiner Business Cat, who wishes to remain anonymous, uses the heat given off by mining Bitcoin to dry the meat and turn it into jerky. Bitcoin miners have an excess supply of hot, dry air,” they told Cointelegraph, so it makes sense to channel that heat over strips of meat to make jerky.
Good temps for jerky so far #bitcoin pic.twitter.com/0WPnTuNwnF
— ₿business Cat (@_business_cat) April 4, 2022
Similar to Merkle Standard, for Business Cat, the process of cooking jerky isn’t about making money: “My regular food dehydrator uses a lot less energy than an S9, but dried jerky with hashpower just tastes better.”
They told Cointelegraph that “the support of the Bitcoin mob on Twitter” convinced them to try the idea. They joked that “most of us [la plebe de Bitcoin] we’re loners by nature, so a few words of praise or support from others along the way go a long way.”
The Bitcoin community is increasingly supportive of ideas that promote the Bitcoin philosophy and ideas unique to Bitcoin, from a Bitcoin hostel in Portugal to a Bitcoin lake project in Guatemala.
Business Cat is delighted with his experience and suggests others to take up home mining. They combined life advice with Bitcoin mining advice explaining to Cointelegraph:
“Should you mine Bitcoin at home? Yes. Should you learn to be a better chef? Also yes.”
Bitcoin warms my pool
Bitcoin enthusiast Jonathan Yuan found a cheaper, faster and more stable way to heat his swimming pool in Minnesota, all thanks to Bitcoin mining.
Thanks to immersion heating, Bitcoin now feeds your pool. Although Yuan does not like swimming, his children are happy to swim in the pool while he secures the Bitcoin network.
Yuan told Cointelegraph that the entire experiment went so well that he is now planning to heat “the whole house.”
Has the propane gas tank heater gone bad? Bitcoin miner to the rescue!
Michael Schmid is a very well traveled and knowledgeable Bitcoiner. When the propane gas heater in his RV broke down, he re-equipped the vehicle to be heated by “waste” heat from a Bitcoin S9 miner.
Schmid told Cointelegraph that he saves “about 50% of the cost of propane, which works out to about $2.7 a day.”
“Now the fun part, the miner produces about 0.00006259 BTC per day (with the current difficulty and 13 TH/s) at the current price of 38k. This is $2.40 a day, so technically we heat the airstream for free “.
Besides, a kick in the teeth for anti-Bitcoin environmentalists – heating the Schmid family’s airstream with Bitcoin instead of propane gas is better for the planet.
“Our Airstream has solar panels on top that can generate up to 400W of power, so technically of the 1400W the miner uses, 400W of that is self-generated and fully renewable.”
Waste heat from Bitcoin miner dries out wood
Kryptovault is a Norwegian Bitcoin mining company with the greenest credentials in the entire industry. Powered 100% by hydroelectric power, the energy it uses resolves valid blocks on the Bitcoin blockchain and the heat generated by the miners blows onto damp logs at a local sawmill.
In a video made by the company, Sveni Bjerke, CEO of the local Varma firewood company, which receives the dried logs from the miners, says that “they only use the surplus heat from the data center”.
The environmental success of the project has stimulated other partnerships. Kjetil Hove Pettersen, CEO of KryptoVault, told Cointelegraph that algae drying for local businesses is coming, and that they are “constantly looking for new ways to use our waste heat.”
Pettersen explained: “Approximately 99% of our electrical energy is converted to thermal energy.”
As we know, energy is never really lost, it just changes form. So this is a way to use this energy twice and support other local industries in the process. I can’t think of any better industrial use case than the what are we doing”.
Promote financial and energy autonomy in Guatemala
In southern Guatemala, a team of Bitcoin miners donated an S9 to the local mayor and the mining proceeds are being used to repair a wastewater treatment plant.
Bitcoin mining in this economically disadvantaged region has boosted revenue while improving air quality.
Also, as Bill Whittaker, co-founder of Bitcoin Lake, told Cointelegrpah, the team is “self-funding carbon-negative Bitcoin mining R&D.” Two high school students, Madaket and Kate, are planning a trip to “LakeBitcoin in early May to deliver the S17s they’ve been working on.”
The Bitcoin miners they bring in will join the first Bitcoin miner and will naturally be powered by renewable energy, in this case biogas. Biogas is growing in popularity as a source of energy for Bitcoin mining.
Bitcoin mining grows flowers and food
A greenhouse in the Netherlands is heated by Bitcoin miners instead of natural gas. That’s what Bert de Groot, founder of Bitcoin Bloem, says.
In collaboration with a large greenhouse, they “put in a Bitcoin miner to reduce the use of natural gas, whose prices have skyrocketed, and heat the greenhouse with the miner’s heat instead.” De Groot continued:
“The family that owns the greenhouse first put in electric heaters because the cost of natural gas was multiplied by 6, now they pay them for electricity, which is used for mining, and they receive the heat for free.”
It’s a win-win situation. After all, who can say no to flowers?
Asked about the e-waste issues that the media associates with Bitcoin mining, de Groot said: “A miner should last at least five years. We don’t know of any ASICs (S9) that have become e-waste yet.”
Furthermore, they are also fond of delivering flowers to their local community.
We just delivered the flowers to the elderly home. suus of @BrabantZorg received them. By coincidence the garden was renewed and they will put them for the 50 elderly outside in the new garden. They didn’t have money for the plants so they were really happy with the donation. pic.twitter.com/7CivmZxyjo
—BitcoinBloem (@BloemBitcoin) April 6, 2022