Company Name: The heat
Founder: Alex Busarov
Date of establishment: April 2020
Headquarters location: Remote control
Number of Employees: 25
Website: https://heatbit.com/
Public or Private? What is confidential
At the beginning of 2020, Alex Busarov was stuck in his apartment in Shanghai during the COVID. To relieve his boredom, he ordered the Antminer S9, a Bitcoin mining machine, to play with.
After plugging it in, he quickly learned two things: Bitcoin miners are noisy and hot.
While Busarov saw the previous product as an annoyance, he saw this as an opportunity.
Fast forward to today and Busarov and his team are preparing a holiday shipment of bitcoin miners that run quietly and double as space heaters (and air purifiers) – the flagship product of his company, Heatbit.
In addition, Busarov created a product that helps distribute the hashrate of Bitcoin, which is already a very dangerous area.
“The first kind of value I saw in this was using energy to heat your home and mine Bitcoin at the same time, but the campaign started to evolve as I saw the importance of decentralized Bitcoin mining,” Busarov told Bitcoin. Magazine. “I think we’re creating a very strong infrastructure for Bitcoin to continue.”
How Heatbit Devices Work
Heatbit devices stand at 24 inches tall and 8 inches wide. They are cylindrical in shape and have a smooth finish.
Getting started with a Heatbit device is “as difficult as connecting a Dyson device,” according to Busarov.
After doing so, users only need to download the Heatbit app and connect the device to WiFi to start mining bitcoin.
When the device is up and running, using no more energy than a Dyson space heater and making no more than a whispering sound, it points to the hash power it produces in an automated mining pool, currently NiceHash and soon. being Luxor. Users will eventually be able to choose their own mining pool or search for Bitcoin blocks without being part of the pool if they wish.
“In fact, you can start without knowing what a mining pool is,” Busarov explained. “But if you learn more or if you already know about mining pools, you just plug in the details of the mining pool you want to join, or mine alone.”
Busarov clarified that the function of choosing your own mining pool or mining alone is not yet enabled for all users, but it will be soon.
“We have no intention of locking users into a certain pool,” he said.
When the device works 24/7, it mines about 700 sats per day, which is equivalent to about 20,000 sats per month – about $20 per month as the value of bitcoin at the time of writing.
Earned sats are held in a smart contract until the value reaches a certain threshold (currently between $10 and $20 worth of bitcoin) before they are deposited into the user’s wallet address on the Bitcoin base chain.
Busarov knows that some users are worried about the rise of Bitcoin’s currency, which is why he and his team are working on using lightning.
“Lightning is definitely coming,” said Busarov. “It’s not working yet, but it’s coming.”
Hashrate distribution
As Busarov said, it was not his original intention in creating Heatbit devices to contribute to Bitcoin hashrate diversification. However, when he began to look at how it was centralized in other ways, he recognized this profound dimension of Heatbit’s value proposition.
“If you have five major mining companies and 20 well-known mining sites, if you want to damage Bitcoin, you know those 20 sites, right?” warned Busarov.
“Also, if the price of Bitcoin drops too much, which happens sometimes, and the mining companies are overcrowded, they may no longer exist,” added Busarov about the risk of large mining companies collapsing.
“But people will still use heaters, because they don’t spend more money to dig a mine in this way. They will still use their miners because they don’t lose money, which makes it a cheaper way to mine.”
At first, Busarov’s claim that established domestic miners can play a legitimate role in supporting the Bitcoin network seems hyperbolic, especially if you consider the fact that the number of hashrate Heatbit devices currently being produced is very small compared to the number of large mining companies. produce.
However, when one considers the size of the domestic heater market, Busarov’s assertion seems less believable.
“There are approximately 200 million electric heaters sold every year,” Busarov said, referring to the market Heatbit is looking to capture in the future.
However, in the short term, Busarov understands that consumers in that market don’t really have the money for a space heater like the Heatbit, which costs $799.
“Most people wouldn’t buy an $800 heater,” he explained. “We’re looking to make an affordable version so we can sell more.”
Prioritizing accessibility has taken a back seat to focusing on quality and timeliness, however. Busarov and his team have been putting all their efforts into making a robust and reliable tool that they can deploy quickly.
Built to Last, Ready to Ship
The current iteration of Heatbit devices is the product of a tremendous amount of R&D and the sourcing of quality components from over 70 different suppliers.
In other words, Busarov and his team have created a device that can take a beating. (Not that you should crash your Heatbit device; we don’t condone Bitcoin miner/home heater abuse here at Bitcoin Magazine.)
“Today, I was testing the devices of the latest team,” said Busarov.
“I put one in the box and threw it away. I was throwing it like UPS or FedEx, I took it out to find out it wasn’t broken,” he added.
Busarov shared this information with a smile, one that seems to be part innate because of my reaction to his account of how he tests the durability of his products and the part that comes from the faith that many in the Bitcoin community have had in him.
“When we started construction, it took longer than we expected,” explained Busarov, adding that he and his team were working under pressure as customers had pre-ordered the equipment.
“Some people complained about shipping delays and asked for a refund, and we did, but a lot of people said, ‘Hey, guys, you’re doing a good thing. We believe in you. Keep going,” he added.
“When people say something like that to you, you can’t stop. When there is so much faith and trust that people place in you, that gives you great strength and motivation to continue.”
Busarov and his team continued to do, finally creating a reliable product ready to ship in abundance.
The Future of Heatbit
Busarov hopes that when major home appliance companies see what Heatbit has created, they will be interested in creating similar products.
“I think that once we have shown that this is possible, many companies will come to it,” he said.
“It’s going to start getting really interesting when companies like Dyson and Samsung and the big electronics companies start looking at this,” he added.
“Imagine Samsung is starting to produce home appliances – not space heaters – but some home appliances do mine on a scale.”
Busarov has been closely monitoring the development of the open source Bitcoin mining organization, and has been in contact with one of its leaders: Skot, the founder of Bitaxe. He’s looking at what he can incorporate into that move, while always being mindful of the fact that he’s building a consumer product whose safety is paramount.
“I am very interested in open source Bitcoin mining, and I hope we will be able to contribute to it,” Busarov said.
“This being said, we must be careful, because heaters use a lot of energy and it can be dangerous for people to play with them,” he added.
As a final thought, Busarov reiterated that he does not believe that he is simply building a new product for the average consumer, but that Heatbit is playing a role in shaping the future of Bitcoin mining.
“Bitcoin mining is not going to be about these warehouses that use loads of energy and then these big companies have to sell bitcoin to the mines to pay for the energy they use and their operating costs,” he explained. “With local mining, you don’t need to sell any bitcoin you earn.”
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