Americans are heating their homes with bitcoin this winter

As winter’s chill settles in across the U.S., and electricity bills become a bigger budgeting issue, most Americans will rely on their usual sources of warmth, such as home heating oil, natural gas, and electric furnaces. But in a few cases, crypto is generating the heat, and if some of the nascent crypto heat industry’s proponents are correct, someday its use as a source within homes and buildings will be much more widespread.

Let’s start with the basics: the computing power of crypto mining generates a lot of heat, most which just ends up vented into the air. According to digital assets brokerage, K33, the bitcoin mining industry generates about 100 TWh of heat annually — enough to heat all of Finland. This energy waste within a very energy-intense industry is leading entrepreneurs to look for ways to repurpose the heat for homes, offices, or other locations, especially in colder weather months.

During a frigid snap earlier this year, The New York Times reviewed HeatTrio, a $900 space heater that also doubles as a bitcoin mining rig. Others use the heat from their own in-home cryptocurrency mining to spread warmth throughout their house.

“I’ve seen bitcoin rigs running quietly in attics, with the heat they generate rerouted through the home’s ventilation system to offset heating costs. It’s a clever use of what would otherwise be wasted energy,” said Jill Ford, CEO of Bitford Digital, a sustainable bitcoin mining company based in Dallas. “Using the heat is another example of how crypto miners can be energy allies if you apply some creativity to their potential,” Ford said.

It’s not necessarily going to save someone money on their electric bill — the economics will vary greatly from place to place and person to person, based on factors including local electricity rates and how fast a mining machine is — but the approach might make money to offset heating costs.

“Same price as heating the house, but the perk is that you are mining bitcoin,” Ford said.

A single mining machine — even an older model — is sufficient. Solo miners can join mining pools to share computing power and receive proportional payouts, making returns more predictable and changing the economic equation.  

“The concept of using crypto mining or GPU compute to heat homes is clever in theory because almost all the energy consumed by computation is released as heat,” said Andrew Sobko, founder of Argentum AI, which is creating a marketplace for the sharing of computing power. But he added that the concept makes the most sense in larger settings, particularly in colder climates or high-density buildings, such as data centers, where compute heat shows real promise as a form of industrial-scale heat recapture.

To make it work — it’s not like you can transport the heat somewhere by truck or train — you have to identity where the computing heat is needed and route it to that place, such as co-locating GPUs in environments from industrial parks to residential buildings.

“We’re…