Some 3 years back, I first heard about the Revolutionary crypto currency Bitcoin. Back then, it was a just another tech news for me. Every now and then, I keep getting news about Bitcoin, how it is going to revolutionize our Financial Industry, democratize our unbalanced Economic machinery, how people went from Rags to Millionaires by investing in Bitcoin.
Then I tried to understand the technical aspects of it, but got totally lost in the complexities and Quit!
An attempt at Bitcoin Mining:
It was early 2016. I heard enough about Bitcoin and the gold rush. I wanted to setup Bitcoin Mining in my system, so I could get some free Money 😛
After almost a decade of donating my CPU power to Volunteer science computing (BOINC, SETI@Home), I decided to put it on hold and utilize my CPU cycles for myself, for Bitcoin.
I kept reading and learning more about it. Understood how it is impossible for a Single computer to mine a Bitcoin. So I joined the Indian mining pool, GB Miners. I followed tutorials and setup the Mining script in my Mac machine. Was very happy about it and triggered the mining process, only to get this message:
NO GRAPHICS CARD FOUND!
What the fuck! This exact message is my nightmare in my Childhood. As a Gamer without a Graphics card machine, this single message gave me sleepless nights over Games that I couldn’t play. But it came back to me again. Dropped the mining plan!
Fast Forward a year August, 2017:
Bitcoin is again hitting the headlines now. 1 BTC was valued at around $1000 by the start of the year and now it’s nearning $5000 now. Yeah, after the China ICO ban, it dropped to nearly $3500, but the Phoenix started rising again from the hashes and it is $5700 at the time of this writing (Oct 26, 2017)
I looked the charts and found it was valued at around $100, back in 2013. Had I invested Rs. 10,000 in 2013, I would have got Rs. 5,00,000 by now. What a big opportunity I have missed.
Now I want to seriously get into Blockchain. But have no money to Invest. oh Wait. There is another dot which is waiting to be connected. My mom wanted to invest in Share market and learn more about it. She was nagging me for almost 6 months. Ha. Now the dots are connected. Taught her Bitcoin in a way she understands and shown her Bitcoin chart from 2009 and 2017. She is now totally convinced to invest. Also warned her on the volatility of Bitcoin, so I am not responsible for any loss.
First Investment
We made a first Investment of Rs. 18,000 and we decided this: * If the BTC price drops to 15K, we will sell immediately with minimum loss. * If BTC price rises to 20K, we will take out Rs. 500 and celebrate and probably think of investing more. To our surprise, it happened in just 3 days. Yup. 18K raised to 20K in just 2 days. Unbelievable. As planned, we took the money out and started celebrating 🙂
Etherium Blockchain:
Not just Bitcoin, the whole Blockchain technology and it’s applications are mind blowing, both because of their Technical aspects and their potential to disrupt the corrupt Economic machinery and bring in Economic equality to all. If we had Blockchain and Internet back in days of French revolution, we would had much much better Democracy and Equality everywhere in the world! I was actually excited about Etherium blockchain more than Bitcoin, for it’s capability to develop our own Blockchain systems. Have to learn more on that as Blockchain is a mandate for some systems of Grassroots, that will come in upcoming years. Hail Satoshi Nakamoto and Blockchain!
