{"id":9923,"date":"2023-01-22T14:19:24","date_gmt":"2023-01-22T14:19:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cryptoheretostay.com\/?p=9923"},"modified":"2023-01-22T14:19:25","modified_gmt":"2023-01-22T14:19:25","slug":"bitcoin-mining-in-a-university-dorm-a-cooler-btc-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cryptoheretostay.com\/?p=9923","title":{"rendered":"Bitcoin mining in a university dorm: A cooler BTC story"},"content":{"rendered":"<script type=\"text\/javascript\">\r\namzn_assoc_placement = \"adunit0\";\r\namzn_assoc_tracking_id = \"totafreearti-20\";\r\namzn_assoc_ad_mode = \"search\";\r\namzn_assoc_ad_type = \"smart\";\r\namzn_assoc_marketplace = \"amazon\";\r\namzn_assoc_region = \"US\";\r\namzn_assoc_default_search_phrase = \"crypto\";\r\namzn_assoc_default_category = \"All\";\r\namzn_assoc_search_bar = \"false\";\r\namzn_assoc_title = \"\";\r\namzn_assoc_rows =\"1\";\r\n<\/script>\r\n<script src=\"\/\/z-na.amazon-adsystem.com\/widgets\/onejs?MarketPlace=US\"><\/script>\n<p>The humble university dorm is a place for students taking their undergraduate degrees to study, rest, make new friends, host wild dorm parties and, of course, mine Bitcoin (BTC).\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>A master\u2019s student in market research and self-described \u201cdata guy,\u201d Blake Kaufman, has hooked up an S9 Bitcoin miner to the Bitcoin network. <\/p>\n<p>He won the S9 miner in a raffle at a mid-Michigan Bitcoin meetup and immediately set about learning how to use it.<\/p>\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Blake has consistently shown up to every https:\/\/t.co\/2Q6OuIwW4O event with at least one friend, a tremendous attitude, and unmatched enthusiasm. <\/p>\n<p>Glad you won the S9 raffle! <\/p>\n<p>Hash away at those KYC free sats, and enjoy the heat this winter! https:\/\/t.co\/AQNzDjnDGC<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Mid-Michigan Bitcoin (@517Bitcoin) November 17, 2022<\/p>\n<p>During a video call with Cointelegraph, Blake joked that he knew next to nothing about mining prior to the raffle. The moment he won, he raced to the nearest place offering a power cable and an ethernet connection to try it out, his dad\u2019s office. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe turned it on, never hearing one [an S9] before. And if you know, when they start, they immediately rev up to 100% and we\u2019re all just in the room like \u2014 oh my gosh \u2014 this thing is loud! We ran it for probably two hours and we walked into that office and it was hot.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The hot and noisy realization kicked his brain into gear. The Michigan winter was fast approaching and his university provides free electricity. Why not mine Bitcoin from a dorm and take advantage of the waste heat?\u00a0There was one minor but\u00a0audible hurdle to overcome. \u201cHow can we fix the noise,\u201d he questioned.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI just looked up online, like, how to noise cancel S9, and this picture of a cooler on Pinterest popped up. Me and my Dad were like, \u2018Let&#8217;s build it. Why not?\u2019 So we bought a $5 cooler on Facebook Marketplace and we had the tubes in our attic and we spent about two hours drilling holes and it ended up working.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The pair constructed the Bitcoin mining cooler box, which now takes up residence in Blake\u2019s dorm. The finished product would not look out of place in any dorm room and is \u201cactually quieter than an air conditioning unit,\u201d he explains.  <\/p>\n<p><em>Two angles of the cooler-encased Bitcoin miner.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>But aren\u2019t there rules against this sort of thing at university? Won\u2019t the energy-hungry Bitcoin miner put a dent in the university\u2019s electricity overhead? <\/p>\n<p>\u201cSo the miner is about 900 watts an hour, a mini fridge is about 60 to 100 watts a day. So it\u2019s pulling a decent amount of electricity there. I looked up all the rules and it didn\u2019t say anywhere you couldn\u2019t mine a Bitcoin or use a Bitcoin miner. So if they say you can\u2019t do this, I\u2019d be like, okay, you didn\u2019t say I couldn\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In a nutshell, Blake\u2019s not breaking any rules. What\u2019s more, one miner in one dorm in a large university home to thousands of students is unlikely to raise suspicion. It\u2019s an ode to the famous saying attributed to Rear Admiral Grace Hopper that sometimes, \u201cIt is better to ask for forgiveness than permission.\u201d  <\/p>\n<p>The ASIC S9 now whirrs away, generating roughly 0.000001 BTC or 100 satoshis \u2014\u00a0 the smallest amount of a Bitcoin \u2014 per Bitcoin block, which occurs on average every 10 minutes. It translates to \u201cabout a dollar a day\u201d in fiat-money terms. It\u2019s a paltry amount but not to be sniffed at as a student. <\/p>\n<p>Blake\u2019s total outlay to start his Bitcoin mining venture was a coolbox and a few cables at less than $20 and he can probably reuse the cooler come summertime.<\/p>\n<p><em>The mining cooler interior.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Incidentally, Blake\u2019s next challenge is to work out what to do when the weather improves and the mercury rises. Peak summer days in Michigan can hit 95 degrees Fahrenheit (35 Celsius). As a result, the outside air temperature will not cool the miner, a vital part of its operation:<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSo I&#8217;ll have to figure out something, maybe put it in a box of ice cubes and then something like that. I don&#8217;t know yet.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Blake has already considered using the Bitcoin miner to heat his family home after graduation. The idea, Blake explains, is to experiment with whether he can offset the gas cost at home and make it profitable. \u201cIt\u2019s just unfortunate because, in Michigan, our electricity cost is $0.14 a kilowatt hour.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><em>Michigan\u2019s energy costs are relatively high in the United States, as shown by a darker purple color. Source: Chooseenergy.com<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Electricity and heating costs are higher in Michigan than in energy-producing\u00a0states like Texas. Using the waste heat from Bitcoin mining could be a way of offsetting the energy costs. <\/p>\n<p><strong><em>Related: <\/em><\/strong><strong><em>The Bitcoin shitcoin machine: Mining BTC with biogas<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Indeed, tapping into Bitcoin miner waste heat is a growing trend, particularly prevalent for at-home\u00a0or \u201cchicken shack miners,\u201d as they\u2019re known. BTC Gandalf from the Braiins marketing team told Cointelegraph:\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cChicken shack\u201d miners are the backbone of the Bitcoin network hash rate. It\u2019s incredible to see all the different ways they come up with to mine. They provide an invaluable service in keeping hash rate decentralized.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Armed with oodles of Bitcoin knowledge, Blake has since tried to orange pill his classmates and even professors. Unfortunately, some of them hold the belief that \u201cBitcoin is a scam.\u201d He has taken it upon himself to set the record straight:\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m emailing those teachers being like, Hey, office hours, when are they? Let\u2019s have a chat. You can\u2019t just come out and say Bitcoin is a scam with a Bitcoiner in the room.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In the meantime, the S9 is whirring away in his dorm room, contributing to a network Blake strongly supports and generating 100% \u201cfree money.\u201c<\/p>\n<p>Well, \u201cOther than the $30,000-a-year tuition I pay, but it\u2019s 100% free electricity,\u201d he joked.<\/p>\n<p><script type=\"text\/javascript\">\r\namzn_assoc_placement = \"adunit0\";\r\namzn_assoc_tracking_id = \"totafreearti-20\";\r\namzn_assoc_ad_mode = \"search\";\r\namzn_assoc_ad_type = \"smart\";\r\namzn_assoc_marketplace = \"amazon\";\r\namzn_assoc_region = \"US\";\r\namzn_assoc_default_search_phrase = \"bitcoin\";\r\namzn_assoc_default_category = \"All\";\r\namzn_assoc_search_bar = \"false\";\r\namzn_assoc_title = \"\";\r\namzn_assoc_rows =\"1\";\r\n<\/script>\r\n<script src=\"\/\/z-na.amazon-adsystem.com\/widgets\/onejs?MarketPlace=US\"><\/script><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/cointelegraph.com\/news\/bitcoin-mining-in-a-university-dorm-a-cooler-btc-story\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The humble university dorm is a place for students taking their undergraduate degrees to study, rest, make new friends, host wild dorm parties and, of course, mine Bitcoin (BTC).\u00a0 A master\u2019s student in market research and self-described \u201cdata guy,\u201d Blake Kaufman, has hooked up an S9 Bitcoin miner to the Bitcoin network. He won the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9924,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_wp_rev_ctl_limit":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9923","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bitcoin-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cryptoheretostay.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9923","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cryptoheretostay.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cryptoheretostay.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cryptoheretostay.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cryptoheretostay.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9923"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cryptoheretostay.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9923\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9925,"href":"https:\/\/cryptoheretostay.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9923\/revisions\/9925"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cryptoheretostay.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9924"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cryptoheretostay.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9923"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cryptoheretostay.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9923"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cryptoheretostay.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9923"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}