You can turn a profit legally if you have cutting-edge hardware, cheapish lecky and a use for the heat. A couple of years ago, when the Antminer S9 had just been launched (as seen in those pics) and my dad was still alive and needing a very warm house to keep him comfortable, I configured four S9s to provide constant background heat in the winter. This was part of a scheme with a friend to heat by mining; his warehouse already had background heating by both GPU and ASIC miners. These units are power-dense (S9 uses about 1.5kW) so they have powerful noisy fans that need extensive silencing in a domestic environment. Having got much of that rigged, the value plummeted and James and I put the miners back in their boxes never to be used again. If you do it on a grand scale in China, you can get the power cheap enough that you don't have to use the heat.
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