Bitcoin Forum

It is surprising to hear a miner, Simon Byrne equipped his BWM i8 hybrid vehicle retailed for roughly $150,000 to be able mine bitcoin, it is also reported to be able to mine ethereum.


Although, it is said the battery capacity of the mining rig will be able to handle the mining, but what about the heat that will be generated from the mining rig and also the lifespan of the car battery. This is surprising and the first of its kind that I heard, but won't this be injurious to the car?

While this mining rig can be powered by the hybrid car's battery, the trunk needs to stay open to avoid overheating.

https://i.imgur.com/opkCcJR.png

https://www.coindesk.com/us-man-installs-crypto-mining-rig-in-hybrid-bmw-sportscar
https://cointelegraph.com/news/driving-to-the-moon-hodler-installs-portable-mining-rig-in-bmw

The extra weight from the graphics cards alone will probably negate the profit...

... unless he can charge his car for free.

This is more of a fun experiment than a serious venture into crypto mining. Well, at least he's clear about setting it up "to annoy gamers."

As regards cost-benefit, I'm not sure if it's practical for anybody to do this. The car has a battery which could support the mining, of course, but then for the battery to charge, the alternator has to be working. Otherwise, the car's battery could easily be drained. For the alternator to work, the car's engine has to be turned on, thereby consuming fuel.

This is, therefore, practical only when Simon's on the move.

I don't think alone by itself the car's technology would be able to handle the heat that will be generated from mining bitcoin and as you mentioned ethereum as well. Not to mention the weights of the graphic cards he will have to use in order to effectively mine bitcoin. I think this project he's doing is showing us how he think mining of the future will be. exactly, it doesn't have that much practical use today and he's risking his luxury car's integrity in order to get a few bitcoins here and there. But I guess if you could own a, luxury car like that you wouldn't really mind the coats of repair and all

surely everything has been set in such a way by the car manufacturer so that it will not produce a bad impact on the car and the user. but what makes me curious is, how many bitcoins or etherum are mined? and will it continue to work when the car engine is off? or continues to work even when the engine is turned off? if so, then it needs a lot of power.

You have to consider that this could be another door of opportunity to upgrade the way we mine bitcoin, I am not interested in the part about annoying gamers. This could be a possible start up for aesthetically pleasing mining rigs.
We need to run the numbers on this one to see whether the cost in fuel is better than having the rig stationary at home. I don't think that it is a practical especially the car is priced at around 150k USD, but if we were to see past that, and try it on a cheaper economy cars, I think that it has some potential although the cooling will be the big problem and protection from the elements.
If the rig could be reduced to a smaller scale and the issue of heat and cooling is resolved, I think it will be more practical although the mining output will be much lower.

This is a useless extravaganza to get free media exposure. I don't like this type of stunt because they make miners look like s spoiler brats. This is serious business and should be taken seriously.

I'm not going to click on the link to the cancer site known as cointelegraph but according to your quote it seems like another one of their brainless articles. You can't mine bitcoin with graphic cards anymore. The only way to mine bitcoin is to use SHA256 ASICs specialized to mine bitcoin. Anything else is only good for weak altcoin mining.

So I think it was all included and covered by the insurance company? That was a clever idea but the fact that it was in the car the maintainance, accidents and other factors might put the system at risks can be very serious. Or maybe it is just a marketing strategy.

I second the opinion! It looks like a fund experiment to bitcoin mining and probably make more people aware about the bitcoin mining and its capabilities. I don't think he will be able to drive around the town with his car when the mining is on just because of the heat generated from the rigs. But yes, when the car is parked in somewhere safe, he will be able to utilize it for mining make full use of his time even when he is away from the home! But cost efficiencies will not be there unless he has free access to electricity! Fun experiment only but not practical!

I really doubt that's going to mine any Bitcoin. Ethereum would be viable with that set up. Though nonetheless, just another rich guy enjoying the wealth and flaunting it to us lol.


I don't think so. The article said that he built it himself so I think anything that happens to that mining rig won't affect car insurance.

So, he put a PC inside a car, how is this news-worthy? There's no practical benefits to it, just leave it at home where's there's less risk of getting your rig damaged.


If someone says that you can mine Bitcoin with GPUs, this just means that they have no clue about cryptocurrency. Typical crypto journalism.

What for? I don't quite understand why do this?

The guy looks pretty spender to me. He bought 78 cards for 93K USD and started mining when the price of ETH was USD 700. Already in profit considering the current price of the ethereum. So it is but obvious he would go crazy spending his money or profit over his interests and dreams.

But, technical guys should shed some light on this technology collaboration. I mean will it be really that much profitable to hime? The heat thing is real. My small mining rig burnt at least 2-3 times even when there is air conditioner in the room and temperature always set to below 18 degree celsius.

With this set up and cars heat plus outside hot air entering the vents, this could be disastrous!!  ::)

Project fun aside, why would it be a better idea to do this rather than mining using your home's electricity?

The only thing that could help is that a sudden large increase in your home energy consumption is obvious compared to the consumption of an electric car. But still, I find it just as a potentially fun project... until your car's power is suddenly overpowered and leads to other malfunctions you'd have to spend a lot of money on.

It useless. If it will profitable E.Musk already set up this into his cars.

More of a proof-of-concept IMO. There were a lot of similar ideas in the past that incorporated mining into different means of moving around i.e. walking, driving, etc. Those, perhaps, were viable back in the days that they were introduced (2014 - 2015), and as expected, not all of them continued to bring in profits and were never heard from again. If this mining module can be directed to other coins that utilizes GPU mining pretty well and is in the low hashrate range, perhaps this could work, at the expense of the battery's life expectancy and the car's hardware due to excessive heat.

He wants to mine bitcoin while on the road that simple but its too complex since it needs special cooling system to be able to work his rigs smoothly and needs a lot of power also that battery might not enough to power on his rigs I dont know if he only want for publicity with his experiment.   

Nothing is new here, there’s a news in 2017 that a miner used his Tesla Model S to mine Bitcoin.
I mean he used the electricity aspects of his car, not the computation power from that Tesla.
https://interestingengineering.com/this-tesla-owner-built-a-bitcoin-mining-rig-in-model-s-trunk
I am more interested in how green energy policy will affect crypto mining.

That's innovative and optimistic. Driving while getting to earn some altcoins that he wants? maybe he's using nicehash if it's a graphics card to mine bitcoin?

Experiment? well. If you've got tons of money and crypto holdings. You can do whatever you want with that money.

I do understand that it is an experiment, to be honest, it's actually a great innovative idea, but with 6 RTX 3080 cards only on the rig, I don't think it's sufficient enough and I do have to say that the car's battery won't last enough with that much of a firepower of a rig, imagine 6 GPU's inside your car, definitely an innovative and good idea, but definitely has to have changes and adjustments, especially with the cooling system, that's a killer rig and you need to have a killer cooling setup to normalize the temperature, it's good though and I don't see a reason why this should be stopped, it's just an experiment, well, an expensive experiment indeed.

Damn, this guy is insane. No one can be as insane has he is and also this is the first time I heard such thing. From my knowledge, I think that installing mining rig to a vehicle does not harm it too much since car is always operate with fuel so in order for battery to have power, car needs to run. THerefore, the car will not easily be damaged

I am not surprised Simon had a good publicity stunt with his mining rig. He knew that his actions will attract some headlines, with a battery power how much hardware he is using to mine bitcoin, i bet he wont be getting any reward that will be profitable and ETH just upgraded to POS and there is no way he will be mining them, he might have mined some before and since you posted this today i am just saying  ;).

Although, the coin that the graphic cards will mine is not yet mentioned. Normally, with the last year reduction in Bitcoin mining reward, while the mining difficulty greatly increased last year, and also still increasing, this has made GPU mining rigs not to mine Bitcoin profitably, also I am doubting if it can mine Ether. But, any news we hear about this will be included on this thread.

With the picture I saw from the link you provided, this should not be advisable because it looks absurd, miners like GPU do hot to the extent it has set some mining farms ablazed. it will be dangerous to use car to mine, I mean having the mining rigs inside car. It can be that the battery can power it like it is said in the OP board but what about the hit, it is good for us to not risk what we know can be dangerous. Mining should be done in the official way, to use ASIC is the best, only ASIC can mine bitcoin now, GPU will only lead to loss and not advisable.

This guy is probably damn rich to try out stuffs like this. I mean, this isn't an efficient way right? All those electricity he is going to need and even more when driving the car. Also, what like others said, what about the heat issue and the gpus weighing down the car?
Kinda feels like he just did it to get some reaction. He did say though he is doing it to "annoy the gamers" and the earnings are like a "bonus".

I do not know how the car will be able to mine when it is said that the trunk has to be opened, it is not only about when the car is moving but to avoid overheating, the truck will be opened.

 While this mining rig can be powered by the hybrid car's battery, the trunk needs to stay open to avoid overheating.
https://www.coindesk.com/us-man-installs-crypto-mining-rig-in-hybrid-bmw-sportscar
https://i.imgur.com/opkCcJR.png

This is just silly and something that someone that has too much money than sense does or something someone does just because they can. I would never do this is just ridiculous and unconventional. Do you just leave the car lying around? Why would you want to drive it when it's full of mining equipment?


Shit post more? You know nothing about mininig.

He bought a pretty much useless car so don't blame him.

The I8 is expensive, offers low performance for what you have to pay, offers not very good range and is unreliable. To top it off he sacrificed the trunk run a mining rig and that mining rig is going to make an already low range car even worse.

How far is he going to be able to drive while mining? To the nearest store for groceries and back? :D

The person who is doing these experiment must be wealthy, the weight of GPU is not that much and there is no mentioned about the size but the heat will be a real issue and how he is dissipating it is not clear either, if he added any other addition method to cool the machine which will make the entire thing heavy.  

Either way good to read and it would be great to know what coins he is mining using his car gig  ;D.

GPU cards can still mine Ethereum, I've seen people in other mining forums that they're talking about it able to continuously mine before it's fully POS.
The first one that I've thought about is nicehash, it is only them that I know who only gives a reward in bitcoin through mining with GPU cards.

Mere looking at the article, the power and voltage generated to mine those coins were not mentioned at any point, however, I don't think graphics cards are more eligible to mine more profits within the short space of time in the article, AFIAK, the hash rate from graphics cards has as low as 30-50Mh/s compared to ASICs standards of 14Th/s, the difference shows how poor the mining process will go from graphics cards.

a unique research, but it seems that mining by car still seems a hassle. But in the future it may be possible, with innovations in electricity and mining equipment sizes that are simpler and more compatible for cars.

I don't think that the miner drives his car while mining.
I think he did it for fun because he is tech-savvy, and that idea comes from a joke by someone in his community.
It can be experimental purpose too, to show how good or how powerful Tesla's electricity, so it used for crypto mining to prove it.
I also think that it can be promotional material by Tesla to join the bitcoin hype in 2017, since the "When Lambo" thing still correlated with bitcoin hype that year.
plus, If I am not mistaken Tesla's owner can get free electricity on the Tesla station.