How I make money mining bitcoins

Eric Elliott: "I'm an internet developer. I am a Bitcoin miner. Coin is a decentralized cryptocurrency, basically a virtual form of money. Bitcoin is controlled by a software algorithm in order to control the amount of Bitcoins that are released into the economy. The algorithm determines that there's only so many that are mined during a certain period of time. Currently, that is 25 Bitcoins are found about every 10 minutes or so.

Those people that are mining contribute to the overall, I guess, computing power of the network. You're only going to get rewarded in essence whatever percentage of that power your computers are putting out. So those are the graphics cards right there; those are what are doing all the work. Most miners are probably earning fractions of Bitcoins. A standard computer that you basically see any gamer having.

I started mining in 2011. So I invested about 800 to build this computer. At the time when I put it online, I was probably mining, you know, one Bitcoin a day, something like that. In essence, all you're doing is downloading software and running software that's running 24/7 that are accepting these mathematical problems, solving the mathematical problems, and sending results back up to, you know, to a server.

The fan, it's kind of annoying, but you know, it's the sound of money. There's not really much technical know-how that you need apart from being able to keep a computer up running 24/7. But you don't have to be a programmer; definitely don't have to be a cryptographer. Up to now, I haven't really spent much of the Bitcoins apart from reinvesting them in new hardware.

The new machines are basically going to be in a case. The next iteration will hopefully have a quieter fan and make more money. If you want to make money with Bitcoin, mining is not the way to do it. You're better off trading Bitcoin than trading Bitcoin. There's a lot greater risk."