Can You Get Rich Using Raspberry Pi To Mine Cryptocurrency?

After the first 20 minutes, the temperature of the water appears to increase at a fairly constant rate of 0.0006 degrees Celsius per second. This increase in temperature means that the heat energy has increased, which we can calculate:

here Mr stuff mass (in this case, water), and c Specific heat capacity is the amount of heat energy required to raise the temperature of a substance by 1°C. for water, c 4.186 joules per gram per degree Celsius. So, with 1,000 mL of water and my rate of temperature change, I figure that the water requires 2.51 joules of energy per second (or 2.51 watts).

Oh, look at that. Even with this rudimentary measurement system, it’s very close to the power going into the Raspberry Pi. The difference is probably due to imperfect insulation. So you see cryptocurrency energy is just heat energy. Honestly, I’m surprised it worked so well.

Show me the money!

Although it is possible to run a crypto miner as a way to heat your house, people probably don’t do it. What is the payment? Well, let’s do some quick calculations. I ran my Raspberry Pi miner for 12 hours. How much money did that produce? Wait for it … 0.00000006 XMR. Converting this to US dollars, it is 0.0012 cents (not dollars). Yes, it would be a slow way to amass a fortune. If I drive it for 12,000 hours, I still can’t buy a piece of chewing gum. Perhaps chewing gum was not used either.

And that’s not even accounting for costs. I mean, mining isn’t free – you have to pay for electricity. Average cost of electricity US 16.94 cents per kilowatt-hour. If I run my miner at 3 watts for 12 hours, that would be 24 watt-hours or 0.024 KWh. Using electricity prices, this would cost 0.41 cents. Let me do some quick math here. Yes, 0.41 cents is more than I made. I’m no financial expert, but that sounds like a bad business model.

Of course, no one but a physicist would mine crypto on a Raspberry Pi. There are fancy mining machines (costing thousands of dollars) that allow you to mine coins faster and with less energy. Another thing to consider is the future value of a cryptocurrency. Even if the cost outweighs the reward today, it may one day be worth much more. Finally, a crypto miner can live in a location with cheap electricity. It is even possible to run miners on solar.

However, don’t forget that for every joule of energy you put into a mine, you’re going to produce 1 joule of heat energy. You need to get rid of that heat, or it will cause problems for your computer. But the cooling system uses more energy, and this can make it difficult to generate profitable coins.

But it must work, since there are quite a few mines in the US. In 2024, it was estimated 2.3 percent of electricity went into cryptocurrency. That’s quite a bit, and I’m not really sure it’s the best use of our energy supply – especially since crypto is a manufactured thing.