You don't agree that some (probably most) people in the market for a water heater don't have incentive for the tsuris of figuring out all the details with getting a mining device running, connected to the internet, etc.?
I don't know. Depends how the device is designed. If it simply mines for the manufacturer and subsidizes the cost of the purchase, and if configuration is simple or nonexistent (perhaps a built-in cellular data chip with prepaid access), then I can see that working absolutely, and even possibly driving non-mining heaters off the market altogether. Many purchases are made without thinking past the up front cost.
Cellular providers are not fungible every where. You are consistently attempting to erase the non-fungible characteristics in your analysis.
I can't find a BTC miner with that wattage consumption for less than perhaps $20,000. I just briefly checked and only saw a 1250W one for $10,200.
I don't believe that is remotely applicable because you are paying for cutting edge power efficiency, for the case where that matters (high density deployments in data centers and mining farms), not the case where power is effectively free. If you can find them, you can buy older, less power-efficient miners for next to nothing.
Can you show me any example? If we choose 10X less efficient technology, thus 10X less Bitcoins for the same wattage, thus my maximum of $50 (probably less) water portion of the electric bills gets subsidized by $5 per month. And for what additional cost and tsuris?
Work some specific numbers and I challenge you to find it to be viable. Is all the cost of BTC miners in the exclusivity (limited supply) of the latest (Intellectual Property) designs and virtually no hardware fabrication cost at all? Surely more firms would have entered to drive down prices in that case.
I do understand that if you produce a dedicated chip instead of ASIC, then costs decline significantly with volume. But efficiency also declines with age of the design.
If you don't replace your miner every 18 months, then you subsidy declines by half according to Moore's law. Are Bitcoin miners following Moore's law.