Some people believe that cryptocurrencies are a strange way to make money. And in a way, they are right. From energy extracted from volcanoes to body heat, here are some weird ways to do crypto mining.

Volcano-powered mining

Some governments of the world are in favor of cryptocurrencies. But El Salvador has taken this commitment further and has set out to create a Bitcoin City powered by volcano’s energy.

The geothermal plant that will power Bitcoin City has not yet been built. But president Nayib Bukele has already advanced his attempts to harness the energy of El Salvador’s volcanoes with strange forms of crypto mining. In 2021, they installed 300 miners to extract Bitcoin at the Berlin Geothermal Power Plant near the Tecapa volcano.

volcano-crypto-mining

Body Heat Crypto Mining

The following weird way of crypto mining looks like something from The Matrix. In that film, the humans were hooked up to a device that drew electrical energy from each brain so the machines could live.

At The Institute of Human Obsolescence (IoHO), they achieved something that also seems science fiction. The institute managed to mine cryptocurrencies just by using body heat.

Thanks to a special suit, they managed to get 37 people to collect 127,210 milliwatts of electricity. The experiment lasted 212 work hours and mined 17,000 different crypto assets.

The cryptocurrencies obtained were divided between the study participants and the institute. But, with such a low rate of profit, it’s still far from becoming a way of mining cryptocurrencies for everyone.

Moon Mining

Although we still don’t know about the existence of mining farms on the moon, the following strange form of crypto mining will not cease to amaze you. 

In the 1960s, NASA engineers created the Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC) to direct an American rocket to the moon.

moon-weird-crypto-mining

With only 16 bits, this computer was one of the first to have integrated circuits. It also provides the computing power needed to control the rocket’s orientation.

And while the AGC is now obsolete, Ken Shirriff and his team set out to use it to mine crypto on the eve of the 50th anniversary of the moon landing.

However, he later admitted that the computer was very slow. Therefore, “it would take the AGC about a billion times the age of the universe” would be needed to use it to mine a block successfully.

Weird ways of crypto mining closer to heaven

We know a mosque can sound like one of the most extravagant crypto-mining places. But, the truth is that they have become an excellent way to extract cryptocurrencies because they have subsidized energy.

In 2019, the Iranian government spoke out against the practice and repeatedly tried to stop it. But, this is not the only country where this weird way of crypto mining has been reported because, in Russia, a church was also used for such a practice.

But this is not the only way crypto connects with religion. Thus, as we have seen before, cryptocurrencies can help various religious manifestations differently.

A very cozy crypto mining

Around the world, many people spend each winter wondering how they will pay for their heating. For example, in 2019, two million Germans could not afford these expenses.

Thus, in Siberia, miners took advantage of the opportunity in 2017. Therefore, they built A floor heating system that takes advantage of the excess heat expelled by crypto-mining farms.

Mining using a nuclear reactor

The debate about the damage that cryptocurrency mining can cause to the environment continues in public opinion today. What would you think if we told you that nuclear energy could also be used to mine Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies?

A nuclear reactor has the unusual problem that it produces too much power (5.1 terawatt-hours annually). Therefore, the energy is wasted. Thus, in 2021, a company hotărât to use the surplus energy from nuclear reactors in a weird way of crypto mining.

Game boy for mining crypto

Last but not less strange form of crypto mining has to do with gaming. In 2021, a Youtuber decided to start a project to mine Bitcoin with a standard Game Boy.

To mine BTC with a device that came out 20 years before the currency, the content creator adapted the console to a Raspberry Pi Pico and a computer so that it could connect to the Internet.

But as magical as mining BTC with a retro console may sound, the truth is that today’s miners are 125 trillion times faster. Therefore, it would be impossible to earn some money with this method.


These are some of the strangest crypto miners we found on the web. However, many possibilities have yet to be explored, which could take cryptocurrency mining to another level. Can you think of any others?


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Author

Working to make a decentralized world. Philologist and psychology student. I have been writing about cryptocurrencies since 2017. Literature, coffee, and cryptos.

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