After successfully connecting the Game Boy hardware with the internet, Stacksmashing used third-party and open-source software to mine Bitcoin.
YouTube content creator Stacksmashing has demonstrated how and what it takes to mine Bitcoin and other proof of work digital assets through a 30-year old gaming tool Game Boy. According to him, he opted to use gaming hardware to replace modern graphics cards due to available concerns.
As Bitcoin and digital assets mining become a profitable and lucrative business venture especially during the pandemic, modern mining tools are running out of stock. Moreover, the huge influx of institutional investors into the crypto mining industry has made the business very competitive.
The Bitcoin industry has grown exponentially over the last year fueled by the coronavirus crisis. Holding Bitcoin in place of fiat has become increasingly popular among institutional investors led by Tesla Inc (NASDAQ: TSLA) and MicroStrategy Inc (NASDAQ: MSTR).
The Bitcoin mining industry consumes a huge amount of electricity, which makes the investment unpopular among most investors. Geographical places with low temperatures like some parts of China and also Russia that have affordable electricity have housed most of the Bitcoin mining rigs.
With the increased competition and difficulty in mining Bitcoin, the most popular hardware used is called ASICs. Bitcoin mining difficulty according to Bitcoinblockhalf stands at 21,865,558,044,611, with the hash rate at 168.29 Exahashes/s. The asset was trading around $57,101.64 at the time of reporting, having jumped approximately 1.6% in the past 24 hours.
Bitcoin Mining with Game Boy
As Stacksmashing explained in his YouTube video, Bitcoin mining through the Game Boy hardware requires some extra modifications. First, Sine Game Boy does not access the internet, Stacksmashing explained how in order to access a Bitcoin block.
“We also need it to announce our block in case we manage to mine one, but the Game Boy doesn’t have Wi-Fi or anything, so how can we get it to communicate with the Bitcoin node? Luckily the Game Boy has a link port, which is normally used to perform Pokémon trading and other highly important things, but for mining, we can use it to communicate with a computer,” he noted.
After successfully connecting the Game Boy gaming hardware with the internet, Stacksmashing then used third-party and open-source software to mine Bitcoin. Notably, the hash rate result for the Game Boy was approximately 0.8 hashes per second. However, it is slow compared to modern miners, whereby Antminer S19 Pro records a hash rate of 110.0 TH/s while WhatsMiner M30S++ records hashes of 112.0 TH/s.
“If you compare that to a modern ASIC [application-specific integrated circuit] miner, which comes in at around 100 tera hashes per second, you can see that we are almost as fast, only off by a factor of roughly 125 trillion. At this rate, it should only take us a couple of quadrillion years to mine a bitcoin,” he noted.
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