It makes something terribly wasteful a little bit less terribly wasteful. Especially as the generated bitcoin "value" is still 99% speculation.
That heat generation must have terrible efficiency ratios, electricity is the most ineffecient general source of heat in the first place and these things require additional energy to transport the heat they generate away (i.e fans) so they stay functional. I can't think of a more inefficient way of generating heat. Maybe some people here have fun coming up with more ineffecient heat sources.
> these things require additional energy to transport the heat they generate away (i.e fans)
The 100% of the energy of the fan is eventually transformed to heat. The wind is slowed by the viscosity and transformed to heat, the friction in the bearings produces heat directly, the sound is absorbed by the walls and transformed to heat, even if it has a nice led the small amount of light is absorbed after a few reflections and transformed to heat.
So a fan is 100% efficient transforming electricity to heat, and a bitcoin miner is also 100% efficient transforming electricity to heat. [1] You can discuss which one has a better side effect, if it's more useful the wind of the fan or the blockchain security, but both are equally efficient to produce heat.
[1] The loss of using electricity for heat is that in the electric plant it is not possible to transform he 100% of the heat to electricity. (The transformation in the other direction is easy.) You can use the electricity in a heat pump to try ro regain part of this loss. And also remember that the transportation of the fuel to each building is not free, so there is some loss in the alternative method of heating. (Assuming you want to compare oil->transportation->heat to oil->electricity->heat. Comparing hydroelectric/nuclear/wind/whatever is more difficult.)
I still wonder what the efficiency loss is on actually capturing the heat here so it is usable elsewhere while the building where it's generated stays cool. I guess most of the heat will be lost on the surface area of the building
I mean in district heating you use some closed, well isolated system. Though maybe they use water cooling and get a closed system with that.
That heat generation must have terrible efficiency ratios, electricity is the most ineffecient general source of heat in the first place and these things require additional energy to transport the heat they generate away (i.e fans) so they stay functional. I can't think of a more inefficient way of generating heat. Maybe some people here have fun coming up with more ineffecient heat sources.