When I first started taking an interest in Bitcoin, I thought, “Hmm… maybe I could just buy one Bitcoin.†Little did I know that a single Bitcoin costs a year’s salary!
A few days, and a little research later, I was gung ho about earning my first satoshi instead. A “satoshi†is the smallest unit of Bitcoin, worth one hundred millionth of a Bitcoin, or 0.00000001 BTC. Apparently, it was named after Satoshi Nakamura, the inventor of Bitcoin, and most likely not his real name.
But how?
I could have just bought some of this crypto money with actual money, but where’s the fun in that? Instead, I started googling ways to earn Bitcoin online.
The first thing I tried, and still use, is Honeygain, a program that lets you share your spare internet bandwidth with various, probably dodgy, companies in return for cash. The problem here is I’m only earning 2 cents a day. I’m a patient man, but patience has its limits. Eventually, when I earn $20, I’ll be able to cash out in Bitcoin.
I then tried Timebucks, a website that pays you to do tasks such as fill in online surveys, watch videos, subscribe to stuff, and… ugh, it’s ugly and not fun at all. The surveys I’m offered are in Japanese, and everything else earns you only half a cent. I’ll need to earn $10 to cash out in Bitcoin.
Finally, I heard about mining cryptocurrency. You need a good computer to do it, preferably a gaming PC with a fancy graphics card (which I have!), and then you just install some software that does the work for you. I’m using NiceHash, and earn about 12 cents an hour while I watch AppleTV+. The problem here, though, is that my GPU is working at max load, so I’m not sure if that 12 cents an hour will even cover the cost of electricity.
Success!
And so, thanks to NiceHash mining Bitcoin directly, I’m the proud owner of 2,443 satoshis. That’s a whopping 102 yen’s worth (about $1) of Bitcoin.
And to celebrate, I went to the convenience store and bought another $100 worth! Even more amazing, that very night, the value of Bitcoin shot up 15%! How’s that for luck?!
If you like, you can find me on Twitter at @nick_ramsay. I'd love to hear from you!
Nice! I like how you are using these things you already own to generate more money! That’s monetization!
It would be interesting to know the cost of how much more power your computer uses when mining. Glad to hear your fortune went up over 15% in one night!