Company Name: heat
Founder: Alex Busarov
Founding date: April 2020
Headquarters Location: Remote
Number of employees: 25
Website: https://heatbit.com/
Public or Private? Private
In early 2020, Alex Busarov was stuck in his Shanghai apartment during the COVID pandemic. To quench his boredom, he ordered an Antminer S9, a bitcoin mining machine, to play with.
After plugging it in, he quickly learned two things: bitcoin miners are noisy and they get hot.
While Busarov saw the former byproduct as a nuisance, he saw the latter as an opportunity.
Fast forward to today, Busarov and his team are preparing Christmas shipments of silently running bitcoin miners that double as heaters (as well as air purifiers), his company's flagship product. heat.
What's more, Busarov has created a product that helps decentralize the bitcoin hashrate, which has become dangerously centralized.
“The first kind of value I saw in this was how to use energy to heat your home and mine bitcoin at the same time, but then the mission started to evolve when I realized the importance of decentralization of bitcoin mining,” Busarov told bitcoin. Magazine. “I think we are enabling the most resilient infrastructure for bitcoin to work.”
How Heatbit devices work
Heatbit devices measure 24 inches in height and 8 inches in diameter. They have a cylindrical shape and an elegant finish.
Getting started with a Heatbit device is “as difficult as connecting a Dyson device,” according to Busarov.
After doing so, users only need to download the Heatbit app and connect the device to WiFi to start mining bitcoins.
Once the device is running, using no more power than a Dyson heater and making no more noise than a whisper-volume hum, it directs the hashing power it produces to a default mining pool, which is currently NiceHash and coming soon. be Luxor. Over time, users will also be able to choose their own mining pool or search for bitcoin blocks without being part of a pool, if they wish.
“Basically, you can start without even knowing what a mining pool is,” Busarov explained. “But once you learn a little more or if you already know about mining pools, simply enter the details of the mining pool you want to join, or mine solo.”
Busarov clarified that the functionality to choose your mining pool or solo mine has not yet been enabled for all users, but will be in the near future.
“We have no intention of locking users into a particular group,” he said.
If the device runs 24/7, it mines about 700 sats per day, which is roughly equivalent to 20,000 sats per month, about $20 per month based on the price of bitcoin at the time of writing. .
Earned sats are held in a smart contract until the amount reaches a certain threshold (which is currently between $10 and $20 in bitcoins) before being deposited to the user's wallet address on the bitcoin base chain.
Busarov is aware that some users are concerned about rising bitcoin fees, which is why he and his team are working on implementing Lightning.
“Lightning is definitely coming,” Busarov said. “It's not enabled yet, but it's coming.”
Decentralizing the Hashrate
As Busarov mentioned, it was not his original intention in creating Heatbit devices to contribute to the decentralization of the bitcoin hashrate. However, once you started considering how centralized it is in some aspects, you recognized this deeper dimension of Heatbit's value proposition.
“When you have five large mining companies and 20 known mining locations, if you want to damage bitcoin, you know those 20 locations, right?” -Busarov warned.
“Also, if the price of bitcoin drops a lot, which happens sometimes, and mining companies are overleveraged, they may no longer exist,” Busarov added about the risk of major mining companies going bankrupt.
“But people will still use the heaters because they are not spending extra money to extract this way. “They will continue to use their miners because they are not losing money, making it the cheapest way to mine.”
At first glance, Busarov's claim that the home miners he has built can play a legitimate role in supporting the bitcoin network seems a bit hyperbolic, especially considering the fact that the amount of hashrate currently produced by Heatbit devices is infinitesimal compared to the amount produced by major mining companies. produce.
However, when you consider the size of the home heater market, Busarov's claim seems a little more credible.
“About 200 million electric heaters are sold every year,” Busarov said, referring to the market Heatbit seeks to capture in the long term.
In the short term, however, Busarov understands that buyers in that market don't necessarily have the money for a heater like a Heatbit, which sells for $799.
“Most people wouldn't buy an $800 heater,” he explained. “We're looking to make a more affordable version so we can sell more.”
However, prioritizing affordability has taken a backseat to focusing on quality and timeliness. Busarov and his team have put all their efforts into creating a durable, reliable device that they can ship quickly.
Built to last, ready to ship
The current version of Heatbit devices is the product of a tremendous amount of R&D, as well as sourcing quality parts from over 70 different suppliers.
In other words, Busarov and his team have built a device that can take hits. (Not that you should beat your Heatbit device; here at bitcoin Magazine we don't tolerate abuse of bitcoin miners or home heaters.)
“Today I was conducting some tests of the devices from the last batch,” Busarov said.
“I put one in the box and literally threw it away. “I was throwing it out like UPS or FedEx would, and I took it out and checked that it didn't break,” he added.
Busarov shared this information with a smile, apparently born partly from my reaction to his account of how he tests the resilience of his products and partly derived from the faith that many in the bitcoin community have come to have in him.
“When we started building, it took longer than expected,” Busarov explained, adding that he and his team were working under pressure as customers had pre-ordered devices.
“Some people would complain about a delay in shipping and ask for refunds, and we would give them their money back, but then a lot of people would say, 'Hey, guys, you're doing something great.' We believe in you. Keep going,” he added.
“When people say something like that to you, you can't stop. When there is so much faith and trust that people place in you, it gives you so much energy and motivation to keep going.”
Busarov and his team continued and finally created a reliable product that is now ready to ship. a lot.
The future of Heatbit
Busarov hopes that when major appliance companies see what Heatbit has created, they will be interested in making similar products.
“I think once we show that this is possible, more companies will do it,” he said.
“It's going to start to get really interesting when companies like Dyson and Samsung and major electronics companies start looking into this,” he added.
“Imagine Samsung starts producing home devices, not necessarily heaters, but other home devices that explode at scale.”
Busarov has also been keeping an eye on the evolution of the open source bitcoin mining movement and has been in contact with one of its leaders: Skot, the founder of Bitaxe. You're looking at what you could incorporate from that movement, while still being mindful of the fact that you're creating a consumer product for which safety is paramount.
“I really like the open source bitcoin mining movement and I hope we can contribute to it,” Busarov said.
“That said, we have to be careful, because heaters consume a lot of energy and it can be dangerous for people to just play with them,” he added.
As a final thought, Busarov reiterated that he does not believe he is simply creating an innovative product for the average consumer, but rather that Heatbit is playing a role in shaping the future of bitcoin mining.
“bitcoin mining is not going to be about these huge warehouses that use huge amounts of energy and then these large companies will have to sell the bitcoins that they mine to pay for the energy they use and their operating costs,” he explained. “With home mining, there is no need to sell the bitcoins you earn.”
