Boil the Oceans with Fred Thiel - Pacific Bitcoin 2023
In his talk at Pacific Bitcoin 2023, Fred Thiel discusses the significant heat generated by Bitcoin miners and its potential applications. He emphasizes that nearly 100% of the electricity consumed by electronic devices is released as heat due to electrical friction. He debunks the misconception that Bitcoin mining is causing catastrophic environmental damage. The speaker underscores the positive aspects of Bitcoin mining, including its role in expanding renewable energy capacity and strengthening the electrical grid by offering off-take for stranded energy sources. He also proposes innovative uses for the excess heat produced by Bitcoin miners, such as heating shrimp farms, greenhouses, homes, and various industrial applications, which could not only reduce environmental impact but also cut costs.
Transcripts are autogenerated. May contian typos.
[Music] good afternoon hopefully everybody has gotten through the food coma by this point the food trucks were awesome I want to thank the Pacific Bitcoin folks for organizing such a wonderful dietary Extravaganza for us some great LA Food Truck food all right how many of you out here are thermal Engineers just want to make sure that whatever I say I'm not going to have some contradict me in the audience okay we got one over there all right so I'm going to talk about boiling the oceans actually not boiling the
oceans but something similar to it which is all about heat Bitcoin miners create a lot of heat those of you who run mining operations who run mining rigs at home know that they generate a lot of heat but there's stuff you can do with that heat so that's what I'm going to focus on today here's a question for you when with the electronics you have in your home or with anything that consumes electricity what percentage of the wattage going into the device ends up as heat how many people say 50% hands
up okay nobody's willing to take a chance here 70% got some 70 percenters 80% got some 80 percenters 90% okay okay all right thermal engineer is getting close here all right it's actually close to 100% so something that consumes 1,000 watts of electricity is going to put out close to 1,000 watts of heat because electricity causes friction in circuits sometimes we want that heat on purpose like an electrical heater stove for example sometimes that heat is just being consumed by a CPU TV tube whatever it might be and the only other energy
that it loses might be energy emitted for wireless signals um LEDs things like that but we generate a lot of heat with all the electricity that we use so the world thinks Bitcoin miners are boiling the ocean right I mean here's some interesting headlines 2020 Bitcoin will consume more energy than the world does today last time I looked at the calendar it was 2023 and Bitcoin miners still consume less than.
2% of the electricity generated on the planet so I think this data is maybe not very accurate and that was the world economic Forum Bitcoin miners were supposed to cause catastrophic climate change Bitcoin miners today are responsible for driving all sorts of renewable energy generation as a matter of fact 58% of the energy we use is renewable and of the industry as a whole it's over 50% we even got Elon mus to agree with us on that topic so you know Bitcoin mining gets a bad WP and I think we're finally getting to a place where the media and
politicians are accepting the fact that Bitcoin mining is not going to boil the ocean however we also know that Bitcoin mining provides a lot of benefits it expands renewable energy capacity why because there's stranded energy that can't get funded unless it has base load off take Bitcoin miners consume a lot of energy we can consume the energy from solar Farms wind farms Hydro dams geothermal facilities so that they can build them while they're waiting for interconnect transmission lines the single biggest hindrance today
or barrier to the US and many countries transitioning to Green energy is transmission capacity or or the lack thereof as a matter of fact there is upwards of a five to six year waiting list today if you're building a new power generation facility to get that connected to the grid which means you can't get your facility financed which means you can't build it but you need off take and Bitcoin miners provide that and we love working with solar energy companies geothermal energy companies methane capture wind Etc and help
provide them with revenues so they can operate their business do what they have to do while they're either waiting for interconnect or even if they have interconnect because they happen to generate electricity at that period of the day called the belly of the duck which is when nobody's buying electricity so we strengthened the electrical grid because we help balance it many of you have been reading about all the good work that miners have been doing in Texas and balancing the grid there so they don't have to have
blackouts in Texas 40% of the power is generated by intermittent energy meaning wind and solar sun doesn't shine 24 hours a day wind doesn't blow 24 hours a day or as a matter of fact every day of the week and so it's intermittent so it's really hard for the grid operator in Texas to figure out how much energy am I going to need from nuclear coal gas wind solar because they don't really know how much energy they're going to get from the wind on any particular day and so they need to have the ability to have somebody who
can shed load and Bitcoin miners provide that service to the Texas grid to the tune of WS of 2 gaw of power Bitcoin miners also mitigate methane we capture methane gas whether it's from Land fills or whether it's from oil fields methane is 80 times more damaging to the environment than carbon dioxide so if we can take methane gas which is the single biggest problem with global warming today and turn it into carbon dioxide we're dramatically reducing the impact of modern man's use of resources on this planet
but that's not the only benefit of Bitcoin mining Bitcoin miners do produce a lot of heat as a matter of fact an s19 produces 10,000 BTUs per hour which is about the amount of heat generated by three space heaters it's pretty simple 3 kilowatt of energy you get about 3,410 BTUs per hour of that amount of energy generates 10,000 BTUs so you can use s9s as heaters and this is just air cooled but if you think about the percentage of electricity that a consumer uses to heat their house and heat water what
percentage of the electrical build do you think it is who would say 10% 20% 50% yeah 60% 60% of the average electrical bill of a home is spent to heat the house and heat water forget about cooking so that's kind of low grade heat Bitcoin miners can solve that problem but there are lots of other productive things you could do with that heat too think of all the industrial uses where we need to use heat to do things we need to heat certain things in food processing so food can be packaged and processed in agriculture green
houses lot of other places so let's look at some examples shrimp farming talked about boiling the ocean I have to talk about the ocean right so shrimp farming why is shrimp farming something I'm going to talk about well if you think about shrimp farming it needs heat you need to heat the water the shrimp live in you could take a 100 Bitcoin miners using liquid immersion take that immersion fluid heat the water in a shrimp farm and then that water effectively cools down it comes right back into the Bitcoin mining immersion
tanks you can cut the cost of a shrimp farming Facility by 10% you're increasing the margin of the shrimp farming business substantially by simply using the heat off of Bitcoin miners instead of using electricity to heat the water it's more efficient to use Bitcoin miners to heat the water for shrimp than it is to use water heaters it's a lot less expensive so marathon is partnering with companies that are doing aquaculture shrimp farming as a way to use the heat from our Bitcoin mining to grow shrimp we're building a prototype
facility up in Washington state to do this we're also working with people who have hot houses green houses there are lots of places in the world where you'd like to be able to grow crops but you have to do it in green houses because it's too cold think of Northern Europe Canada Northern parts of the US so that heat is useful and if you think about the amount of protein the world today is getting out of the oceans and you think about fish farms and traditional shrimp Farms done in the ocean they create a lot of environmental
damage to the oceans what if you could do that on land instead what if we could do that using Bitcoin mining there' be a lot of benefits to that we would have a consistent food supply and it would be economically more efficient we can heat green houses a single s19 XP can sustain a 240q ft Greenhouse that's about you know 20 x 12 just using the air generated in an environment that's 0 degre c meaning it's freezing outside this is energy that the greenhouse would otherwise have to use and procure to heat the greenhouse and
meanwhile they could be mining Bitcoin so what else can the heat be used for well like I said One s19 XP could heat two single family homes of about 1,000 sare ft each you have Bitcoin boilers that companies are developing you have hot tubs you have dryers for clothing you have all sorts of consumer devices people are developing but heat recycling actually could change the world if you think about all of the heat we generate through Transportation through through heating buildings our homes through cooking through heating water
for laundry industrial laundry industrial manufacturing process if we could instead generate that heat by leveraging Bitcoin miners we would do a much greater service to the world we would lower the cost of Bitcoin mining we would lower the environmental impact to the world and the place would be this planet would be a much better place to live so what if I told you it's time to stop apologizing let's start being proud of what Bitcoin mining can actually do for the world let's start being proud and standing up and saying what we're
doing to help the environment let's start being proud of what we're doing to help the electrical grid and let's tell people in Washington and capitals around the world that Bitcoin mining is good for the environment don't be embarrassed stand up Pro Bitcoin thank you oh hi do you have your ticket to the next Pacific Bitcoin Festival join us as we shine a light on the best of Bitcoin and bitcoiners visit Pacific bitcoin.
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