Definition
A heat pump is a device that moves heat from one place to another rather than creating it by burning fuel or running a resistive element. Its efficiency is measured by the Coefficient of Performance (COP): the ratio of useful heat delivered to the electrical energy consumed. Because a heat pump relocates existing heat instead of converting energy into heat, its COP is almost always greater than 1, typical units achieve a COP of 3 to 5, meaning every kilowatt-hour of electricity delivers three to five kilowatt-hours of heat. A simple electric heater, by contrast, is capped at a COP of exactly 1.
Why this matters for miners
An ASIC miner is, thermodynamically, a 100%-efficient resistive heater: nearly all the electricity it draws ends up as heat, while producing valuable hashrate as a byproduct. That makes mining hardware an ideal partner for heat reuse strategies, the waste heat that other heaters would have to generate is already free. A miner used to warm a home, greenhouse, pool, or workshop effectively earns its electricity back twice: once in bitcoin and once in displaced heating cost.
The COP comparison
Where COP becomes the key benchmark is in deciding whether to heat with a miner at all. A modern air-source heat pump with a COP of 4 delivers four units of heat per unit of electricity, so for pure heating it can be cheaper than a 1:1 miner-as-heater. The miner wins overall only when its bitcoin revenue exceeds that efficiency gap, which is precisely why a low break-even electricity price and current hashprice determine whether heating-by-mining beats a high-COP heat pump.
In Simple Terms
A heat pump is a device that moves heat from one place to another rather than creating it by burning fuel or running a resistive…