QC1: The cryptocurrency-mining home heater
Thanks to a new device from French startup Qarnot, you can now mine cryptocurrencies whilst keeping your house warm. Called the QC1, it is a noiseless and stylish heater that doubles as a mining rig, which Qarnot claims to be ‘the first heater actually generating crypto money’. In other words, as the market heats up, so will your home and wallet.
’The heat of your QC-1 is generated by the 2 graphics cards embedded in the device and mining crypto-currencies or blockchain transactions”,
the product description reads.
“You can watch in real time how crypto markets are trending, on your mobile app and on your QC-1 LEDs”.
Simply plug the heater in, add your crypto wallet to its mobile app, and as the heater warms up, you’ll start receiving the mined cryptocurrency, of which Qarnot does not take a cut, the firm said. Being set to mine Ether by default, the QC1 operates on a Linux server, so users can tell it to mine another currency instead, such as Litecoin or Monero.
About Qarnot
The notion of computer-heaters is not completely foreign to the startup. Qarnot’s innovations focusing on edge computing for data centers actually date back to 2010, when it began selling computer-heaters to construction companies. The company had constructed three generations of computing heaters with multiple CPUs, selling them to firms requiring heaters in their new buildings. As sales grew, this created an expanding data centre, which Qarnot rented out to the French financial sector among other clients.
Hence, as Qarnot still runs these businesses, it may be able to farm out crypto processing to its decentralized data centres during summer, such that QC1 owners don’t melt in their homes.
See this short video by Mashable, which explains the QC1 crypto heater:
Worth the $3,600 price tag?
Using the current price of Ether, Qarnot estimates their cryptocurrency heater can mine roughly $120 worth of Ether per month, as TechCrunch reports. Available for order until March 20th, the rig-heater will set you back €2,900 (roughly $3,600), and arrive for use before June 20th.
However, from a financial perspective, the QC1 raises some concerning issues:
$3,600 is a lot of money to shell out for a heater, or a computer, with payback requiring 30 months of constant heating for the heater to repay itself. In the real world, that would take much longer - unless you live somewhere that is constantly cold, it is highly unlikely you will heat your room up regardless of the climate.
Even granted the $120 of Ether per month Qarnot claims the QC1 can mine, that is not your profit. As research by an accountant at Internet of Business concludes, given an electricity price of 15p (21c) per kW, it would cost $75 to run the heater for a 30-day month. By making $45 per month, it would take you over 6.5 years (assuming the heater is still functional) of constant heating to get your money back mining ether.
The 3-6 year payback period is an eternity in the computing hardware world, and you may see yourself replacing the central heating system every time you need a faster processor. With GPUs getting more and more expensive as demand for cryptocurrencies and the associated mining equipment heat up, getting a replacement may cost you significantly more than the $3,600.
In any case, if you appreciate Qarnot’s latest innovation, are all-in on crypto-mining, and need a heater that cuts down your heating bill, the QC1 seems to address all your worries simultaneously.
Would you be willing to pay $3,600 for a heater that can mine cryptocurrencies? Please let us know in the comments below!
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Resources:
Qarnot:
Official Qarnot Website
Qarnot: The QC1 Crypto Heater
Qarnot: Buy your QC1 Heater Today!
Recent Media:
Digital Trends: Mining for cryptocurrency can now heat your home
Internet of Business: An IoT heater that mines crypto
Engadget: Qarnot’s wall-mounted heater doubles as a crypto-mining rig
Techcrunch: Qarnot unveils a cryptocurrency heater for your home
Futurism: Apparently Home Heaters Now Mine Crypto
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