This is kind of a silly question, but waste heat is waste heat, right? So why isn’t all waste heat generated by computers?

Obviously I’m talking about electricity here. How do we have something like Bitcoin but then have electric heaters? Won’t a Bitcoin miner produce the same amount of heat given the same electricity? You can use heat pumps for extra gains on either, right?

A Bitcoin miner is more expensive to produce and maintain, yes, but over its lifetime shouldn’t it pay for itself? I guess it just seems silly that we have datacenters with cooling (which takes even more electricity), and then also heating for homes.

There is a discussion on Hacker News, but feel free to comment here as well.