Can you get rich using a Raspberry Pi to mine cryptocurrencies?

After the first 20 minutes, the water temperature seemed to increase at a fairly constant rate of 0.0006°C per second. This increase in temperature means that there is an increase in thermal energy, which we can calculate as follows:

here M is the mass of the substance (in this case, water), and C It is the specific heat capacity, which is the amount of thermal energy required to raise the temperature of that substance by one degree Celsius. for water, C It is 4.186 joules per gram per degree Celsius. So, with 1000 ml of water and the rate of change in temperature, I understand that the water requires energy of 2.51 joules per second (or 2.51 watts).

Oh, look at that. Even with this primitive measurement system, this is very close to the power going into the Raspberry Pi. The difference is probably due to incomplete insulation. So you can see that the power of cryptocurrency is just thermal energy. Honestly, I’m surprised it works so well.

Show me the money!

Although it is possible to run a cryptocurrency miner as a way to heat your home, that’s probably not why people do it. What is the return? Okay, let’s do some quick calculations. I ran my Raspberry Pi miner for 12 hours. How much money did that make? Wait… 0.00000006 XMR. Converting this to US dollars, it is 0.0012 cents (not dollars). Yes, this will be a slow way to accumulate wealth. If you run it for 12,000 hours, you still won’t be able to buy a stick of gum. He probably didn’t even use gum.

This doesn’t even include the cost. I mean mining is not free, you have to pay for electricity. Average cost of electricity in US 16.94 cents per kilowatt hour. If I ran my 3-watt mining rig for 12 hours, that would be 24 watt-hours, or 0.024 kilowatt-hours. Using the price of electricity, this would cost 0.41 cents. Let me do some quick math here. Yes, 0.41 cents more than the money you raised. I’m not a financial expert, but this seems like a bad business model.

Of course, only a physicist can mine cryptocurrencies on a Raspberry Pi. There are fancy mining machines (costing thousands of dollars) that allow you to mint coins faster and with less energy. Another thing to consider is the future price of the cryptocurrency. Even if the cost exceeds the reward today, one day it may be worth much more. Finally, the cryptocurrency miner could be in a location with cheaper electricity. It is even possible to operate a miner using solar energy.

However, don’t forget that for every joule of energy you put into the miner, you will produce 1 joule of thermal energy. You have to get rid of that heat, otherwise it will cause problems for your computers. But cooling systems use more energy, and this can make it difficult to produce profitable currency.

But it should work, since there’s a lot of mining in the US. In 2024, it is estimated that 2.3 percent of electrical energy went into cryptocurrencies. That’s very little, and I’m not really sure it’s the best use of our energy supply – especially since cryptocurrencies are just an artificial thing.