Many thousands of people around the world use mining bitcoin (BTC) to earn some extra pocket money. The way this is done has become more and more ingenious over the years to cut costs, and a bitcoin miner by the name of Rev.Hodl might just take the top prize in this regard. He uses the heat generated by his mining equipment to grow cannabis plants.
Bitcoin weed plantation
The miner in question has an Antminer S9 bitcoin mining machine. This is quite a powerful machine and also comes with a price tag of several thousand dollars. The machine consumes a lot of power and, in addition to bitcoins, also generates a large amount of heat. This heat is in many cases seen as an unfavorable by-product, but Rev. Hodl thought otherwise.
He uses the heat to heat his house, to maintain the humidity level and, yes, even to grow cannabis plants during the coldest months of the year. According to him, the bitcoin miner works even better for these purposes than its real heaters.
“It is better than any ordinary electric heater. Ever since I got it, I’ve been using a Bitcoin miner for every reason I could use electric heating. I’ve made a food dehydrator, heated my house in the winter, used the extra solar power at my office network yurt, and so on. Now that I have it, I have to find good reasons.”
Used an S9 Bitcoin miner to heat a cold frame late winter to early spring to give my cannabis and vegetable seeds a head start on the season. Worked beautifully. #plebminer pic.twitter.com/s1mjZmo7lO
— Rev. Hodl (@HodlRev) May 17, 2023
Isn’t BTC mining useless?
On Twitter, the miner said that growing cannabis plants with heat from the miner works very well.
It’s not exactly the first time a bitcoin miner has put the excess heat to work again. Last year, the bitcoin news reported that a Dutch bitcoin miner reused the heat from his miner installation in agriculture. The miner delivered the heat to greenhousesand in return he got access to cheap electricity