The humble college dorm is a place for students earning their college degrees to study, lounge, make new friends, throw wild dorm parties, and of course, mine Bitcoin (BTC).
A market research master’s student and self-described “data guy”, Blake Kaufman, connected an S9 Bitcoin miner to the Bitcoin network.
He won the S9 miner in a raffle at a Bitcoin meetup in mid-Michigan and immediately set about learning how to use it.
Blake has consistently introduced himself to every https://t.co/2Q6OuIwW4O event with at least one friend, a tremendous attitude and unmatched enthusiasm.
Glad you won the S9 giveaway!
Enjoy those free KYC satellites and enjoy the heat this winter! https://t.co/AQNzDjnDGC
— Central Michigan Bitcoin (@517Bitcoin) November 17, 2022
During a video call with Cointelegraph, Blake joked that he knew next to nothing about mining before the draw. The moment he won, he ran to the nearest place that offered a power cord and ethernet connection to try it out, his father’s office.
“We turned it on, we had never heard one (an S9) before. And if you know, when they start, they immediately go to 100% throttle and we’re all in the room like, oh my gosh, this is loud! We ran it for probably two hours and we went into that office and it was hot.”
The hot, loud realization made her brain go into overdrive. The Michigan winter was fast approaching, and his university provided free electricity. Why not mine Bitcoin from a bedroom and take advantage of the waste heat? There was a minor but audible hurdle to overcome. “How can we fix the noise?” she questioned.
“I just searched online for, like, how to cancel noise S9, and this picture of a cooler came up on Pinterest. My dad and I said, ‘Let’s build it. Why not?’ 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.”
The couple built the Bitcoin mining cooler box, which is now installed in Blake’s bedroom. The finished product wouldn’t look out of place in any bedroom and is “actually quieter than an AC unit,” she explains.
But aren’t there rules against this kind of thing in college? Won’t the power-hungry Bitcoin miner make a dent in the university’s electricity overhead?
“So the miner is around 900 watt hours, a mini fridge is 60 to 100 watt days. So he’s dumping a decent amount of electricity in there. I looked up all the rules and it didn’t say anywhere that you can’t mine a Bitcoin or use a Bitcoin miner. So if they say you can’t do this, I’d say, okay, you didn’t say I couldn’t.”
Simply put, Blake isn’t breaking any rules. What’s more, a miner in a dormitory at a large university housing thousands of students is unlikely to arouse suspicion. It is an ode to the famous saying attributed to Rear Admiral Grace Hopper that sometimes “it is better to ask for forgiveness than permission”.
The S9 ASIC now works, generating approximately 0.000001 BTC or 100 satoshis, the smaller amount of a Bitcoin, per Bitcoin block, which happens on average every 10 minutes. It translates to “about a dollar a day” in fiat money terms. It’s a negligible amount, but not to be looked down on as a student.
Blake’s total outlay to start his Bitcoin mining venture was a cooler and some cables for less than $20 and he can probably repurpose the cooler come summer.
By the way, Blake’s next challenge is to figure out what to do when the weather improves and the mercury rises. Peak summer days in Michigan can reach 95 degrees Fahrenheit (35 Celsius). As a result, the outside air temperature will not cool the miner, a vital part of its operation:
“So I’ll have to think of something, maybe put it in an ice cube box and then something like that. I do not know yet.
Blake has already considered using the Bitcoin miner to heat his family’s house after graduation. The idea, Blake explains, is to experiment with whether you can offset the cost of gasoline at home and make it profitable. “It’s unfortunate because, in Michigan, our cost of electricity is $0.14 per kilowatt hour.”
Electricity and heating costs are higher in Michigan than in energy-producing states like Texas. Using waste heat from Bitcoin mining could be a way to offset energy costs.
Related: The Bitcoin shitcoin machine: mining BTC with biogas
In fact, harnessing residual heat from Bitcoin miners is a growing trend, particularly prevalent for at-home miners, or “chicken shacks,” as they’re known. BTC Gandalf from the Braiins marketing team told Cointelegraph:
Chicken Shack miners are the backbone of the Bitcoin network hash rate. It’s amazing to see all the different ways they come up with mine. They provide an invaluable service in keeping the hash rate decentralized.”
Armed with loads of Bitcoin knowledge, Blake has since tried to put an orange pill on his classmates and even his teachers. Unfortunately, some of them believe that “Bitcoin is a scam”. He has taken it upon himself to make things clear:
“I’m sending an email to those teachers saying, Hey, office hours, when is it? Let’s have a talk. You can’t just go out and say Bitcoin is a scam with a Bitcoiner in the room.”
Meanwhile, the S9 is buzzing around his bedroom, contributing to a network Blake strongly supports and generating 100% “free money.”
Well, “other than the $30,000 a year tuition I pay, but it’s 100% free electricity,” he joked.
