this home heater mines cryptocurrencies without you having to understand cryptocurrencies

QC1 is the first cryptocurrency heater designed by the french computing company, qarnot. it claims to defray electric bill costs by passively mining ethereum (by default) and other cryptos of your choosing — bitcoin, litecoin — while toasting your room like an overused playstation.

all images courtesy of qarnot

it’s intuitively designed user experience makes mining as difficult as it’s simple initial set up. for about 3,500 USD, you’ll have to do some math to decide if it’s a good investment. aside from all of that, it’s a sleek little black machine, topped with a clean midcentury-modern strip of wood and a scant amount of dotted, lit-up indicators. it’s all connected to an app.

the process of mining generates heat. a problematic amount of heat. like an over-inflamed part of the body, normally the solution is to bring the heat down with fans and other expensive cooling methods, but with QC1, qarnot has turned the unwanted inflammation into a well-marketed, passively positive feature — a heater for your home. 

it’s hard to say whether this is a computer that passively heats your home, or a heater that passively mines you a volatile, roughly estimated $120 of ether per month. but, in the end, both effects can be desirable, depending on the time, place, year, and market value.