This Machine creates bitcoins on its own. A true money making machine.
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.
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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.
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€!).
That said, I must admit that I had a lot of fun creating this and I love to know that this machine serves to both add transactions to the block chain and to release new Bitcoins.