Get rich with the power of your computer.

Get rich with the power of your computer.

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Wouldn’t it be great if you could get paid by lending out your computer's processing power when you are not using it? It’s called coin mining and anyone can do it.

What is Coin mining?

Coin mining according to Investopedia is when a computer on a peer to peer network solves the next block in a blockchain and gets a coin reward.  A block is a transaction while as a blockchain is a series of transactions.  Since the internet isn't perfect, computers around the world receive multiple transactions happening at a time, sometimes in different orders from other computers.  This leads to a problem since each computer on the peer to peer network must agree 100% on each transaction.  This leads to a race to calculate a series of random number calculations. The computer that guesses the block first gets to put it into the permanent blockchain and gets a coin reward.

If you don’t have a top-notch mining setup filled with multiple GPUs, it is very unlikely that your computer will solve a block first so people have set up pools where people put together their processing power and split up the rewards based on the processing power each person gave. This makes mining possible for everyone with a computer and an internet connection.

Before you start mining on your own computer do some research on your CPU and graphics card.  Although everyone can accumulate coins through mining, your computer's hardware might be too slow and you might end up paying more in electricity costs than you receive in coins.

Further Research Questions: (1) What determines the value of cryptocurrency? (2) Are cryptocurrencies here to stay? (3) Can stores accept cryptocurrency?