There are seven ways you can get Bitcoins: (1) buy them; (2) sell something and get paid in Bitcoins; (3) someone you know graciously donates Bitcoins to you; (4) beg people to donate Bitcoins to you because you really, really want to be a part of the Bitcoin community; (5) create a project and launch it in a crowdfunding platform and ask people to only pledge using Bitcoins; (6) become a hacker and steal some Bitcoins; (7) and finally, there’s mining.

Of these tasks, mining would probably be your last option since it entails spending thousands of dollars on specialized equipment. It’s also much harder to mint Bitcoins than ever before. But if you really want to be a huge part of the Bitcoin community, and don’t mind investing, mining will probably be the most enticing option for you.

What is Bitcoin mining in a nutshell?

Bitcoin mining plays a number of crucial roles in Bitcoin. First, mining is the method through which new Bitcoins are minted and introduced to the system. It also adds transaction records to the block chain which serves to confirm transactions so no spent Bitcoin can be re-spent. Mining’s primary purpose is to allow Bitcoin nodes to reach a secure, tamper-resistant consensus.

In essence, mining keeps the system balanced, secured, and prevents overproduction of the cryptocurrency.

It would seem intuitive that with more miners, it would be easier to discover a new block, but in actuality, as more miners get involved, the difficulty of finding a new block increases for each miner. This means more rigs (or specialized equipment meant for mining) are needed to achieve the same amount of work, thus producing more heat.

The heat is on! Summer heat means new challenges.

Some of Dr. Bitcoin’s own mining equipment, three ASICMINER Block Erupter Cubes with Thermaltake power supplies. These generate a lot more heat than you’d imagine.

According to Blockchain.info, the computational power of the Bitcoin mining network is now 60 percent higher compared to last year. What this means is that rigs collectively are exerting more effort in order to hash new blocks. Just like any computer, when there’s no natural cooling for a rig, the heat will impact system performance. In order to keep your Bitcoin mining gear performing at its best, you need to keep it cool.

As the summer approaches in the Northern Hemisphere, this is something Bitcoin miners have to prepare for.

During winter, Bitcoin miners saved up on electric consumption as powering up their rigs creates heat that can be diverted to keep their living space warm. But in the summer, the opposite could prove true as Bitcoin miners find themselves needing to cool the room where the rigs are placed, as well as other parts of the house or office, which means more energy will be consumed, and at the same time, they’ll need to deal with the actual heat being emitted by the rigs.

In general, if you’re a hobbyist, putting your rigs in an open, well ventilated area is best. If you’re growing your operation to datacenter levels, you’ll need to apply the techniques modern datacenters have been grappling with for years.

Follow the cold: Ship your rigs north.

One simple solution suggested by Mark MacAuley at datacenter consulting firm Blunt Hammer, is that Bitcoin miners should copy what data centers do: follow the cold. What this means is miners in the Northern Hemisphere need to ship their rigs to someplace colder so they can continue mining without having to deal with heating problems during the warmer months.

But this solution isn’t as simple as it sounds. MacAuley stated that miners need to figure out several things first before shipping their expensive rigs to chillier climes.

“The things to figure out will be the cost of electricity, any language barrier issues, and security of the facility and/or the operator. You don’t want to ship an expensive rig or handful of rigs to a place that sells them out the back of their remote mountain top hideaway because he doesn’t have electricity to begin with,” MacAuley explained.

In an ideal world, serious Bitcoin miners may want to consider migrating to a place where it’s bitterly cold all year round (or at least for a good 10 months or so). This way, they won’t have to worry about overheating problems, nor will they need to splash out on expensive cooling solutions since the environment already does it for you. Also, it’s possible to use the heat produced by the rigs to warm the other parts of the facility, thus solving heating problems as well.

Facebook opened a data center in Sweden last year where it’s bitterly cold for almost 10 months in a year. It draws chilly winds from outside to cool its servers while the heat produced by the servers is utilized to warm the office. It’s said to be Facebook’s most environmentally friendly facility as it draws energy from nearby hydro-electricity energy sources, which allows it to reduce the number of backup generators it has to maintain by 70 percent.

Moving you and your rigs to somewhere colder may seem great on paper but it’s not really that easy to uproot your whole life, especially if you have a family. So what other options are there to keep your rigs cool so you can continue mining at the height of summer?

Immersion cooling: potentially costly, but effective at scale.

Immersion cooling is something data centers and even some Bitcoin miners in hot, humid regions will use to keep their servers and rigs cool. It entails the use of specialized electronics cooling liquid such as 3M Novec Engineered Fluid, which is an efficient dielectric that keeps hardware cool with minimal use of energy. It utilizes a two-phase immersion cooling technology which reduces cooling energy costs by 95 percent. It also reduces water consumption by eliminating municipal water usage for evaporative cooling. As for the heat being produced, this can be harvested and used for other purposes such as desalination of seawater.

A view of ASICMINER’s immersion cooling system.

Glass tanks are filled with cooling liquids with low boiling points and computer components are completely submerged in this special bath. Because of the liquid’s low boiling point, then the components heat up, the liquid boils to expel the heat through evaporation. When the water vapor reaches a condenser on top of the tank, it turns back to liquid and falls back to the bath. This effectively removes the heat without having to use more cooling liquid.

In Hong Kong, ASICMINER was able to build its Bitcoin mining facility quickly and cheaply with the help of Allied Control, which built its open bath immersion system using racks and valves obtained locally.