Bitcoin asics are basically just ewaste once they’re no longer useful or profitable. Since they’re designed for just Bitcoin there’s not really any other use. You can get older asics first cheap on the secondary market (although most sellers try to scam people not knowing previous generation miners are useless). Maybe useful if you want a unique way to heat a room?
An early step in recycling is usually shredding. It's better to remove big things made of known metals first (like copper wires and aluminum cases), but if they keep it all together it can still be processed.
has anyone ever actually calculated that? like what if we used old ASICs to heat our rooms, would they be more efficient than a heater after accounting for the small number of bitcoin you'd get?
that's not a great way to think. One needs to think if something is possible before trying to solve unrelated issues that some engineering can probably figure out.
Compared to heat pumps? Yes. But compared to resistive electric heating it's just as good (if not better, since you could theoretically recoup some of the burned energy as cryptocurrencies).
