I always thought computers were simple. At their fundamental level, they are just 1s and 0s. An invisible dance of yes’s and no’s running through a sheet of silicon at billions of times per second. Computers are amazing and unique machines that will forever be apart of our lives. Our sheer dependence on computers motivated me to research the topic? As my understanding of this concept grew, so did my curiosity. I started researching computers as much as I could. I would spend hours a day browsing Youtube and reading articles just to satisfy my interest. That’s why when my dad first brought up the topic of bitcoin during my freshman year, I wasn’t surprised to hear his enthusiasm. I had learned much about this currency over my couple years of research, but I knew very little about how to actually make money off it. He had been tracking the price for a few months and was considering buying a few, just to see what would happen. Little did either of us know; the price of this virtual coin would multiply nearly 30 times in just a few short months.
A few weeks passed and eventually he brought up the topic of buying bitcoin again. His initial interest inspired me to look more into currency and how it worked. I told my dad there was another way to make money off of bitcoins: Bitcoin miners. These impressive and powerful computers are precisely optimized to earn these coins, and I knew I could make one. I explained how this was my once in a lifetime opportunity, like how he explained to me that he missed out on investing in Apple in the 80s. “It could be a money-printing machine,” I joked. With our excitement peaked, we decided to split the $2,000 investment 50/50, and I started the buying process.
I started the process by buying the parts of the machine. I had learned that like Legos, a computer consists of simple components to make the whole. However, unlike an ordinary everyday computer, ours would have a concentrated task. Mining bitcoin is not a complicated process for a computer to do. In essence, by completing simple math problems as quickly as possible, a computer process’ bitcoin transactions from around the world and is rewarded in a tiny fraction of a coin. As more and more transactions take place, the higher the demand for processing, and the higher the reward.
I was lucky enough to know how to build the computer. However, what I was not prepared for was the constant troubleshooting and maintenance I would have to give to this project. Sometimes the computer would simply turn off randomly, sometimes a part was not detected, and other times it merely just ran at half its optimized rate. I learned how to fix issues where there was no logical reason for the problem. Like a calculator, I always thought a computer could never mess up. My hundreds of hours of troubleshooting and blind hope quickly changed my view. I put a vast amount of free time into the project, knowing that potential it had. After lots of hard work, long nights, and determination, I had finally completed my dream project.
I was proud of what I had created. The computer was placed in my room and was like a pet. The loud but rhythmic fans helped me fall asleep, and the heat kept me warm during the winter. From school, I would monitor the machine, and if it had run into an error, I would simply restart it from my phone. My plan was working, and in a little over half a year, our investment should turn into profit. In only a few months, we were already halfway to making our money back. We were lucky because the price of bitcoin itself had doubled since we started, going from nearly $10,000 to $20,000 in a few short months, but as I looked at my account, I had no bitcoin. A few days earlier, hackers had stolen $64 million dollars from the company I mined with.
I felt like a victim. I had done everything right. I built the computer perfectly, I managed everything, I put the time in, and I put the effort in. I was robbed, and I was discouraged. Forced with no other option, we restarted our operation. Bitcoin was still increasing in price, we thought, so there was no reason to stop now. Our operation had restarted and was going well, but for the first time since we started, the price of bitcoin was not doing so well. The bubble was about to burst. It began with my hack, which made national news and hurt the price. Although the price recovered in a few weeks, it was going down again, fast. Believing it would improve, my dad and I decided to hold and not sell. A month later, Bitcoin was back to $8,000 per coin. The fad was over, and we couldn’t even make a profit over our cost of electricity. Again, I was robbed. I did nothing wrong and still lost almost everything. I decided to put the computer in a box and wait a few months; however, the wait was worthless. The coin plateaued at about $10,000, and it simply was not sustainable to continue mining. A year later, we sold the computers for parts and managed to make back about half our initial investment. It was over.
I had lost over $1,000 and months of time and effort. However, as I moved on and started to reflect on the experience, I was the winner. I learned so much about computers and how they operate. In the end, I had learned many skills, from patience and compassion to planning and researching. I had learned not only to build a computer but to manage systems and multitask. I learned countless lessons and gained essential and unique skills that I hope will carry me throughout life. This unique experience has taught me to always keep trying at what I believe in. There’s always an award for doing whatever I think is right. I hope to bring these beliefs and lessons with me throughout life, as I learn and grow from what I was taught. Whenever people ask me what computers are, I always laugh and explain how a computer is just a bunch of simple lego bricks working together to do complicated tasks. However, inside I still have trouble answering this simple question. It is merely just parts working together, but a computer is so much more complicated and beautiful than that. Honestly, I still don’t understand them.
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