According to brothers Stahl from Iowa, their new device can make home-based bitcoin mining profitable again. It can also make cryptocurrency more environmentally friendly.

In the early days of bitcoin users mined cryptocurrency at home. Satoshi Nakamoto, the mysterious creator of bitcoin, is believed to gain more than a million bitcoins for himself, which he never used. In a few years the bitcoin mining landscape has undergone a complete change. It is now dominated by huge mining companies whose competition has been likened to an arms race. The growing centralisation of mining raises anxiety among many bitcoiners: if one entity manages to control 51% of bitcoin mining, potentially it can seriously damage the bitcoin network. The time of individual bitcoin miners seems to have gone forever.

But not everyone shares this view. Brothers Julian and Harrison Stahl, early bitcoin adopters from Iowa, believe they can make home-based bitcoin mining profitable again. In the interview they gave to Allcoinsnews they revealed their invention, the PipeMiner. Similar to an electric heating element, it can be installed in a standard American electric water heater. It will mine bitcoins and use the emitted heat to warm the water. In standard case heat resulting from the energy-demanding process of mining would have been lost. Brothers Stahl believe that the efficiency of the new device would reach 90%. It would stop mining when the water is hot enough, which, according to them, “is a good incentive for taking a daily shower.”

However, the device is not yet finished. Brothers Stahl are currently testing it and hope to have a functional prototype soon. They applied to Boost VC and are looking for investors who would like the idea.

The principle of turning objects of everyday life into bitcoin mining devices has been already promoted by 21 Inc, a bitcoin start-up that has received a $116 million investment. However, it has not been widely adopted due of the cost of the electricity needed to mine bitcoins.

Alexey Tereshchenko