Can a Tesla mine crypto? This owner says he’s doing it and making up to $800 per month

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Teslas are some pretty impressive vehicles, but there’s no way you can use them to effectively mine cryptocurrency, right? One guy says you absolutely can use a Tesla to mine crypto and that he makes up to $800 every month.

In an interview with CNBC, Siraj Raval, owner of a 2018 Tesla Model 3, says that he has been using his vehicle to mine crypto for a while now. He’s tried several different methods and was making upwards of $800 mining Ethereum when the cryptocurrency was at its peak last year.

What Raval is essentially doing is using his Tesla as a power source. He has mined crypto using a couple of different methods. First, he plugged his laptop into the power socket in the center console of his car and ran a Bitcoin miner from there.

He then went a good step further and hooked up a dedicated mining machine with five GPUs directly to the battery of his car. Raval said that he hacked into his Tesla’s firmware to allow for more power output and that was the most profitable method that he has found for mining crypto.

But Raval has his doubters. Another crypto miner and fellow Tesla hacker, Thomas Sohmers, told CNBC that Raval’s hacking was unnecessary. “The car is already built to deliver over 100 kilowatts…There’s no need to do what [Raval] says he’s doing. It doesn’t make technical sense.”

But Raval is blind to the haters. He told CNBC that he plans to turn his Tesla into a fully automated taxi that mined cryptocurrency while it wasn’t driving.

He said he’ll then take the money earned from both transportation and crypto mining to maintain the car and “invest into a diversified portfolio of emerging crypto-community networks.” Those are some pretty bold ambitions, considering how far we are from fully-automated Teslas.

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