A loud gong startled me in the water and broke my relaxed state. I must’ve been there for a couple of hours by the look of my pruned palms. The Sauna Master serenaded us to the big sauna room for Aufguss, a guided sauna ceremony. 

We sat cross-legged around the dry sauna like at a campfire. Going down a step dropped the temp by a degree. Crap, I was on the top level. “Hard doesn’t mean hot, but you know where the door is,” our ritual leader said as he circled the hot rocks waving a towel, spreading essential oils in song with atmospheric ancestral music. 

It was very New York. 

After 15 minutes of what felt more like a spin class than a ceremony, I did my first cold plunge. It was as sharp as ice and left me tingling head to toe. I have no idea how the bros stay in there, submerged for minutes, heads bobbing, modern day Vikings. 

We alternated between the five pools, each with varying temperatures, from ice-cold to hot tubs. 

It was an unlikely place for emerging technology like crypto. The only hint that Bathhouse New York City has a crypto connection is at checkout, when you can choose to book a pass with a credit/debit card or Bitcoin. 

Get that burner wallet out and pay for your sauna with Bitcoin

But the more fascinating use case is mining Bitcoin to heat the pools. “We have 20 miners at our Flatiron location and 22 at our Williamsburg location,” co-founder Jason Goodman said in a recent interview. “The total terahash is usually in the mid-3000’s range.”

“We’re looking at mining as an engineering solution to use energy and capital more efficiently,” Good man said. 

Bathhouse started mining Bitcoin as a pilot project in 2022, after Goodman and his co-founder learned about a Bitcoin miner who used it to heat his backyard pool. Goodman explained how long it takes to mine a Bitcoin. 

“How long it takes to earn a Bitcoin is primarily dependent on two different functions: what percent of the total network hashrate you produce and which epoch you are mining during. In our epoch, we are just post-halving. The current mining reward per block is 3.125 [Bitcoins]. Additionally, other things can have an impact on how long it takes to mine a Bitcoin such as how much activity is on the network at any given point in time, which drives transaction fees,” he said. 

“Since we began mining a few years ago the total hashrate of the network has quadrupled, meaning that if you didn’t also quadruple the amount of mining power you had it would take you much longer to mine a Bitcoin today. For us, it’s not that relevant. We are forced to buy our energy at any price, so any Bitcoin earned is capturing capital efficiency.” 

Swimming in Bitcoin? 

Bathhouse stores any mining proceeds in self-custody, doesn’t sell what they get and deposits the crypto into a long-term savings account for the company.

There’s definitely an air of mystery and exclusivity one feels wandering the Bathhouse halls. It’s dark, underground, and like a maze. Behind closed doors are massage and treatment rooms, and miners powering both the pools and the vibe – turning hundreds of daily swimmers into unknowing crypto users.