The Williamsburg Bathhouse Heating Its Pools With Cryptocurrency
When you can't make them see the light, make them feel the heat.
Published
Sergius Orata, the first-century B.C. ancient Roman creative and general multi-hyphenate, perfected the first-ever water heating system roughly 80 years before the birth of Jesus Christ. The hypocaust was a basement room with a burning furnace enclosed by a tiled ceiling. The smoke from the furnace would rise and slowly heat the basement ceiling, which, above ground, also served as the tiled floors of the first-ever Roman bath houses.
Jason Goodman, a New York City-based entrepreneur, performs roughly the same trick two millennia later. Except instead of manipulating heat from an ignited furnace, he uses excess heat from computers that are simultaneously mining bitcoin.
Bathhouse, a trendy Williamsburg one-stop shop for all things relaxation, exudes modernity. Every surface is sleek and carefully designed. Every panel in every room is faded white, gray, or black. Every lock on every locker is unlatched with an electronic wristband.
The ethos of a bathhouse that uses crypto mining to heat its pools was in place from its inception in 2018. Goodman said he wanted to create a bathhouse that had the communal culture of traditional spas, but hospitality standards that matched his generation’s expectations.
“What they expect from a great restaurant, I want them to expect that from us,” Goodman said. “They want it to be beautiful, they want to be comfortable, they want the product to be great, they want the servers to be knowledgeable.”
For Goodman, a self-described 20-year bathhouse enthusiast and sauna extraordinaire, relaxation is personal. After moving to New York in 2003, he found himself at a difficult intersection, struggling to find a comfortable place for himself in the city. He credits the Russian bathhouse on East 10th Street in Manhattan for opening his eyes to a new community and culture that brought him joy and purpose.
Above ground at Bathhouse, three pools sit in the center of a room that looks like it could have been a wine cellar at one point. The Lighting from the floors of the pools creates a dramatic effect. One pool is hot, one pool is warm, and one is an ice bath. Standing over the room is a ceramic-looking art piece displaying what looks like Romans bathing in a natural hot spring—- one that was presumably not heated by the blockchain.
Last year, five years into his bathhouse venture, he started playing around with the idea of immersion mining. As Goodman explains it (in decidedly more sophisticated language), the mining computers are dropped into tanks filled with a liquid called dielectric fluid. This engineered mineral oil cannot conduct electricity, so the mining equipment stays intact. What this fluid can attract, however, is heat. The heat exerted by the machines and stewarded by the fluid is pumped out of the tanks and used to heat the pools.
As for the actual currency mined by these computers, Goodman said he has not sold any bitcoin yet.
“I used to be buying energy, using it to heat pools, and that was it. Now I’m buying energy using it to heat pools and earning bitcoin, which is money,” Goodman said.
As for energy concerns related to crypto mining, Goodman said that energy use is an important part of human flourishing, and he’s found an efficient “energy-neutral” way to do it.
The decision to post a video on social media in June was not part of a calculated 4D chess marketing move to spark debate, according to Goodman. Nevertheless, all-out guerilla warfare in regard to the merits of cryptocurrency broke out in the comment section. Comments ranged from the distinctly dry, “So cringe - please delete,” to the more nuanced questions like, “I’m concerned about who is mining this cryptocurrency? Who is profiting from it, and whether I support that.”
Many comments were supportive of the innovative idea, including this one:
“Every comment here from idiots who aren't even native New Yorkers who still wear masks and think that swimming in a pool is not only racist but going to end the earth in 5 days. While also claiming the employees here aren't paid and can't afford to live or eat 😂 go back to the miserable self-loathing swamp which you slithered here from. Or better yet, go move to sh*thole California. Faux new yorkers are virtue-signaling attention-seeking clowns.”
While this may not have been a chess move, for a moment, Goodman had the internet in checkmate.