For those of you who don't know, I have been working on a book pertaining to blockchain technology for the past few months. Here is a sneak peek at one of the interviews that is going to appear in the book. I hope you enjoy! You can view this on my blog HERE as well.
After work I sat down with blockchain hobbyist Haydn Gittemeier for a casual interview. He's been involved with bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies for about 5 years. We talked for hours about blockchains, their history, public response, and what the future may hold. I hope you enjoy this preview. The full interview will appear in my upcoming book.
So how long have you been in the blockchain space? What prompted you to get into it?
Well (someone) approached me and told me, "You know that gaming rig of yours, you could be mining bitcoin." And at the time I was like, "That's for criminals; that's what people use to buy drugs with." That was back in 2012.
I don't know exactly when I started mining. That was on an Nvidia GTX 570. Now that's nothing. If you were to mine with that now you'd probably make like a penny a year or something.
I started getting serious about mining in August of 2012. I bought 2 Butterfly Labs FPGAs. I think at the time I could mine like 1.2 bitcoin a day just off of that hardware. At the time bitcoin was something like $12, so it wasn't really anything exciting, especially for how much I spent on the hardware. So that's when I really got into it.
So what was the main reason for your interest in it?
I mean, it was free money [laughs]. I was in the dorms, I didn't have to pay for the electricity. We had super fast internet. It was something to do. It was exciting because it was maintaining a system and making sure it worked.
This preview is from the first half hour of the interview. The full interview lasted 3 hours.