If you've ever wondered where Bitcoins comes from and how it goes into circulation, the answer is that it gets "mined" into existence. And this is a bitcoin miner. A computer that uses special software to solve math problems and are issued a certain number of bitcoins in exchange. This provides a smart way to issue the currency and also creates an incentive for more people to mine.

For this project I was deep diving into the crypto currency topic and I wanted to build my own bitcoin mining rig. The challenge was to have decent overall size while getting enough calculating power to be a bit profitable.

First I installed a mining software (CGminer) on a computer board that is the size of a credit card, a Raspberry Pi 3. For the design I felt deeply inspired by a delicate steampunk spirit with watch parts and mechanisms, Acajou wood and touches of brass. It then looked like this :

Then to give it a lot more power, I had to add what's called an ASIC miner. ASIC stands for Application-Specific Integrated Circuit and it's almost a chip with a lot of calculating power but with only one purpose : in this case mining bitcoins.

After a several weeks of testing, adjustments and bugs resolving, I managed to get my first bitcoins, or fractions of bitcoins. At the time one Bitcoin was around 350 euros (in may 2017 it reached 2400€!). Mining was so cool, but don't get fooled it's not a get rich scheme (anymore). Bitcoin mining now is hardly profitable, this machine probably cost more on electricity now that it will win mining bitcoins. That said, I must admit that I had a lot of fun creating this and I love to know that it this machine serves to both add transactions to the block chain and to release new Bitcoins. Here is the final look :