@vaportrail said:

I bought a badass PC to play video games that had a powerful graphics card. In fact, I stuffed two badass graphics cards into these PCs with the purpose of mining a coin called Ethereum. And then I built another one for good measure. The graphics cards are powerful because they can perform millions of computations per second. While they can be used to play some pretty games, they also can be used for computations required for mining. At the peak of it, I was getting $15-20/day of just letting my computer run. 

To dumb down the whole mining/blockchain thing - many of the cryptocurrencies are based on proof of work. Every time a transaction is completed, a very complex math question needs to be answered. The coin creators incentivize people to donate their computing power by giving them a fraction of the transaction. This math question is open to the whole world and they're all racing to complete it first, and whoever answers the question first gets that bonus given to them. You get paid out for doing this. So I joined a collective cloud of computers that would mine ETH to get paid out in BTC. I got enough BTC to pay for my computers and then some. 

Some of these coins are worthless. Everyone's hoping for a pump and dump meme coin to go big. So there are probably hundreds of thousands of worthless currencies. BTC is the king of all crypto. I don't see it going away for a long time. I could see the value maxing out at 150k-250k. ETH is probably second fiddle. There are others that aren't worthless. 

There are a lot of cool potential with the tech, etc

Just a shame the space is full of the worst people (scammers, grifters, douchebags, etc). Though I'm sure that's been the case throughout history with new, shiny things and just amplified in today's online world 

@vaportrail said:

I bought a badass PC to play video games that had a powerful graphics card. In fact, I stuffed two badass graphics cards into these PCs with the purpose of mining a coin called Ethereum. And then I built another one for good measure. The graphics cards are powerful because they can perform millions of computations per second. While they can be used to play some pretty games, they also can be used for computations required for mining. At the peak of it, I was getting $15-20/day of just letting my computer run. 

To dumb down the whole mining/blockchain thing - many of the cryptocurrencies are based on proof of work. Every time a transaction is completed, a very complex math question needs to be answered. The coin creators incentivize people to donate their computing power by giving them a fraction of the transaction. This math question is open to the whole world and they're all racing to complete it first, and whoever answers the question first gets that bonus given to them. You get paid out for doing this. So I joined a collective cloud of computers that would mine ETH to get paid out in BTC. I got enough BTC to pay for my computers and then some. 

Some of these coins are worthless. Everyone's hoping for a pump and dump meme coin to go big. So there are probably hundreds of thousands of worthless currencies. BTC is the king of all crypto. I don't see it going away for a long time. I could see the value maxing out at 150k-250k. ETH is probably second fiddle. There are others that aren't worthless. 

Interesting! Thanks for the explanation.

@ibleedbrown said:

This is like a foreign language to me. What is a “gaming rig to mine on” mean?

I bought a badass PC to play video games that had a powerful graphics card. In fact, I stuffed two badass graphics cards into these PCs with the purpose of mining a coin called Ethereum. And then I built another one for good measure. The graphics cards are powerful because they can perform millions of computations per second. While they can be used to play some pretty games, they also can be used for computations required for mining. At the peak of it, I was getting $15-20/day of just letting my computer run. 

To dumb down the whole mining/blockchain thing - many of the cryptocurrencies are based on proof of work. Every time a transaction is completed, a very complex math question needs to be answered. The coin creators incentivize people to donate their computing power by giving them a fraction of the transaction. This math question is open to the whole world and they're all racing to complete it first, and whoever answers the question first gets that bonus given to them. You get paid out for doing this. So I joined a collective cloud of computers that would mine ETH to get paid out in BTC. I got enough BTC to pay for my computers and then some. 

Some of these coins are worthless. Everyone's hoping for a pump and dump meme coin to go big. So there are probably hundreds of thousands of worthless currencies. BTC is the king of all crypto. I don't see it going away for a long time. I could see the value maxing out at 150k-250k. ETH is probably second fiddle. There are others that aren't worthless. 

?

WSS

@vaportrail said:

Meanwhile in reality, I bought a gaming rig to mine on. Cashed out at BTC at 50k to break even on the hardware, then continued mining and now I have a rainy day fund. 

Some might even say that there's an intrinsic value to a decentralized currency that no single government can easily manipulate. 

This is like a foreign language to me. What is a “gaming rig to mine on” mean?

@westside-steve said:

https://www.facebook.com/share/r/1AjZUcKgQ2/

WSS 

Meanwhile in reality, I bought a gaming rig to mine on. Cashed out at BTC at 50k to break even on the hardware, then continued mining and now I have a rainy day fund. 

Some might even say that there's an intrinsic value to a decentralized currency that no single government can easily manipulate.