Though bitcoin mining machines are typically cooled by blowers, two clever entrepreneurs from Siberia hope to utilize the heat to warm local houses - with plans to construct around 2k "cryptohouses" by 2020.
| less than a minute read
Siberians Use Cryptocurrency Miners to Heat Homes
The city is reported to be describing itself as “Russia’s informal mining capital,” and is home to a cafe that accepts bitcoin. Irkutsk will also soon host a bitcoin ATM, which was indicated in early October by Anton Friedel – the director of Russian start-up Bbfpro, a company that recently installed ten bitcoin ATMs in Russia’s third most populous city. Frolov asserts that many cryptocurrency miners are drawn to Irkutsk by the city’s low energy costs – with RT reporting that power prices in Irkutsk are approximately one-fifth of those in Moscow. “The profitability of computing calculation at times exceeds the cost of electricity, that’s why it is rational to use it this way,” Frolov stated.
