Cryptotechnology has not stood still. Whereas initially mining was only possible with ASICs, which were incredibly powerful, today you can do it on a 30-year-old game console. Of course, the speed, volume, and other indicators will vary significantly, but the fact that it is possible is already impressive. We know about such capabilities in the course of an experiment.
A group of IT enthusiasts have decided to conduct an experiment regarding mining on game consoles. The Game Boy, which was introduced to the world by Nintendo back in 1989, was used for this purpose. The device is equipped with an eight-bit Sharp processor with a frequency of 4 MHz.
The start of the process was to re-flash the hardware. This is how the guys intended to modify it. The Raspberry Pi firmware was used for that. After that the software used specifically for mining the cryptocurrency (in this case) bitcoin was installed. The final step was to start the mining process.
Thanks to the experiment, the public became convinced that a 30-year-old gaming console could also be used to mine digital assets. Of course, not much progress could be made on this, as the performance only reached the 0.8 H/s mark. This is 8 orders of magnitude less than what today’s powerful graphics cards deliver.
If you estimate it in money, it would take 100 thousand years to get 2 dollars of profit. That’s if you consider the current bitcoin exchange rate. By the way, Apple’s top MacBooks, which are considered some of the most powerful today, are also not suitable for mining. They have demonstrated extremely poor performance.
It is known that you can do some cryptocurrency mining at home and even have some income from it (in some cases a very decent one). But to do so you will have to spend a lot of money first. Home computers, laptops, and gaming consoles are not much help here. You need to buy enough powerful hardware, video cards or ASICs.
Bitcoin today leaves a lot to be desired, but it is still the most expensive cryptocurrency, and even so, you can help with the income. But there is a lot of competition in mining it, so it might not be profitable to mine it at home. However, there are other cryptocurrencies that are highly rated and quite promising to learn about at https://wobitreview.com/.
In any case, mining requires some equipment. As the experts point out, by purchasing an ASIC, for example, then the payback period is usually up to 3.5 months. You should also consider the cost of electricity, as the process “eats” a lot. It is advisable to choose countries or regions where utilities are cheapest. Then the investment will pay off much faster.