“Wait! So I can print digital money at home?” This Eureka moment for folks who are new to bitcoin has played out many times over and will likely continue to repeat itself for quite a while to come as more and more people learn about the crypto currency world and inevitably want to learn more about the process of mining. For new miners there is a steep learning curve of jargon, hardware compatibility, scams and dangerous software downloads, and much more. It can be a daunting task to even know where to start. Sadly there isn’t a simple answer of learning to mine. However, a great place to start is learning from someone else who has done it, so let me tell you a little bit about how I learned to mine crypto!

I, like many people got into bitcoin back in December of 2017 when it was around its all time high of $20,000 (which hopefully we break soon, we’re at $17,968 at the time of writing this in November 2020). I realized in December ‘17 that I wanted to learn how to mine because I didn’t have a lot of money to buy much crypto but making my own by mining it seemed the way to go! I immediately started reading everything I could. The best thing I did was posted online and found out that a few distant friends of mine were actually already mining and finding a miner you know is a great way to learn because most miners love to share their experiences. After a few chats I realized that the best way for me to learn was going to be to just jump into something simple and get my feet wet. Mining on your gaming PC is a great way to learn the ropes of the software and processes like setting up a wallet, learning how to copy and enter pool information etc. Only one problem, I didn’t have a gaming PC. It had been easily a decade since I owned a gaming PC and I have very minimal knowledge of what to do with one, nor did I have the extra cash to buy one. What I did have was desire. I wanted to mine and I wasn’t going to let not having a PC or money stop me from learning! I just had to get creative.