OK, so … where does the “wasted energy” go 
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There’s obviously not much difference in efficiency between a pure heating element and a computer chip (it’s what? 0.1%?), but different heaters are going to be more or less effective based on design. Something that actively circulates warm air into the room is going to be a lot better heater than something designed as a Bitcoin miner that incidentally warms a room by pumping heat out the top of it…
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Well, if it gives me some of the purchase price, we’re all good 
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My main question is:
So I’ve bought a bitcoin mining rig, I mine bitcoin.
Great.
How do I pay my electricity bill with it?
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This is isn’t directly relevant to the point of the article, but I need to correct a glaring factual error (lie?).
Bitcoin did NOT rise steadily in 2018, as the article claims. In fact, the exact opposite is true. Bitcoin crashed in December 2017 and fell steadily (and choppily) until January 2019, when it began to rally.
But, if we recognize this, we might start to question the simple-minded narrative that Bitcoin Is Dead.
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Ah, good. Maybe you can answer my question?
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The narrative isn’t that Bitcoin is dead; it’s that Bitcoin should be dead.
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If you’re talking about electric space heaters, not really. If it has a fan incorporated into it, it may spread the heat through a larger space faster, but after an hour of running, it’s going to put exactly the same amount of heat into the room as an electric space heater without a fan. All electric space heaters are essentially identical in performance. In the US, they are all limited by the size of standard circuit breakers, so they all put out 1500 watts. If you stick 100 different space heaters in 100 different, but identical, rooms starting at the same temperature, and then measure the room temperature 6 hours later, they’re all going to be the same. Also, I’ve seen electric powered oil space heaters. These are still electric heaters, they just put an extra step in converting the electrical energy into room heat. They still put 1500 watts out. They’e still just electric space heaters, they just incorporate a heat sink, so the thing will continue to deliver some of its heat to the room after it’s been turned off. Anyway, my point is, don’t be fooled by all the marketing. All electric space heaters are essentially the same.
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Repurpose them as AI art generators? Surely those require as much heat.
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It’d definitely work, in that it would produce heat and do some amount of bitcoing mining for free. And the safety chin-flashlight seems like a reach, for the reasons @Trurl mentions – I believe that’s the same reason some newer heaters use ceramic elements, which is essentially what ICs are.
However, it costs 24 times as much. And if you leave a towel on it, it might not catch fire but it could cost you $1200.
Also, people tend to use space heaters in irregular bursts, but whenever you stop a mining calculation halfway then you waste all the work up to that point. So the real-life bitcoin crop might be much lower than advertised.
Even if this were used for something more socially valuable, you’d have similar problems, because random individual heating needs aren’t going to align with the needs of HPC projects, or Stadia, or anything else. We already know how to recycle industrial waste heat, and the key to it is scale (like, connecting a data center to a district heating system). Individual solutions just don’t work well for collective problems.
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So, how much actual money have you burned so far?
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I agree. Bitcoin has full body necrotizing fasciitis and is in horrible pain. But it’s still in hospice awaiting last rites.
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Huh, I’ve had radically different results from different heaters, which I assumed had to do with design. So I guess the only inefficiency in this case is the core one - spending roughly $1150 extra for a space heater that saves you $20 a month. Which means I’ll be getting my money’s worth in, let’s see… 28 years. Oh, except I’ll need to buy a new one in a few years to get the same amount of money in return (and assuming Bitcoin doesn’t fall even more), so, uh…
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See I’ve actually had some Bitcoin since 2016, and shit like this — signing up to comment on a tangentially related article just to be a pedant about crypto evangelism — makes me so fucking embarrassed about it, no matter how much money it might potentially make me. The social cost of crypto is not worth the gamble of potential financial gains.
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Your larger point is 100% correct, but as someone who has tested dozens of 1500 watt space heaters over the last few years, I can assure, there is a LOT of variance in performance.
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I’d be curious to know how you’re defining performance. There can be some differences that can result in a perceived difference in performance. For example, let’s say you have two electric space heaters with fans. One of them blows air at twice the velocity of the other. If you put your hand two feet away from both heaters, the one blowing the air at a slower speed is going to feel warmer. This can make someone think that heater is working “better”. But it isn’t. It’s still putting 1500 watts into the room. Radiant heaters can feel very hot if you are right in front of them, but if you move to the space behind the heater, you’ll feel nothing. Again, however, it’s putting 1500 watts into the room. These differences might be important to someone. If you’re just trying to keep your feet warm under your desk, a big radiant heater is probably not going to make you happy. If you’re trying to warm an entire room, a little desktop space heater is probably not going to make you happy, although it may heat the room just as effectively as a bigger heater with a big fan. And of course, there can be differences in quality, so that some piece of shit might quit working after a couple of weeks, where a more expensive heater might last you 10 years or more. But they all do the same thing, yet they’re marketed as if they don’t.
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Did it die for our sins and then rise again 
Find an exchange that:
- Hasn’t slid into bankruptcy/fraud yet.
- Deposit your bitcoin with them.
- Exchange it for real money, pay the bill.
- Hope that it doesn’t disappear in the process.
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