Evolution of Bitcoin Mining Rigs from Intels to ASICs

Once upon a time, Bitcoin mining was only an enjoyable pastime for a select group of nerds. In the beginning, all that was needed was a basic computer. The earliest bitcoin miners utilized normal multi-core CPUs to generate BTC at a pace of 50 coins per block in 2009. With a few decent computers lying around, you might have made approximately $5 per day. As a result of the low difficulty of mining (the amount of computer power required), it made sense for hobbyists and cryptocurrency enthusiasts to participate. However, in less than a decade, a lot has changed. Today, if you mined 50 BTC, you’d walk away with more than $23 million. That same geeky “hobby” would have made you several million dollars if it had traded at the current price of roughly $46,000. But things are a bit more complicated. In October 2010, the public was given access to the code for mining bitcoin using GPUs. There was a rise in the need for specialist mining hardware as the difficulty of mining increased. GPUs were able to handle the work. The technological know-how required to mine bitcoin with a single GPU was minimal. Anyone with a few hundred dollars could do it, and the computational needs were still cheap enough to make it viable. As the popularity of cryptocurrencies grew, the mining community developed several innovative concepts for new types of mining equipment. Finally, the miracle of encryption and blockchain-enabled almost anyone to create mo...