Aurich Lawson

This is the second in a two-part series exploring Butterfly Labs and its lineup of dedicated Bitcoin-mining hardware. In part one, we looked at the company and the experiences customers have had with it. In part two, we share our experiences running a Bitcoin miner for a couple weeks.

Toiling in the Bitcoin mines

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There is a whirring, whining presence in my dining room. I notice it every time I walk through. Every day, it sucks down about one full kilowatt-hour of electricity. In a year, it will consume almost $100 worth of juice—and that's on top of the $274 it costs to buy the box in the first place. Oh, and it's hot, too. If I moved it into my office and could stand the noise, I could keep a cup of coffee comfortably warm on top of the thing. Why on earth would anyone want such a disagreeable little machine in their home?

The short answer: every day, that machine magically generates something like $20 in bitcoins.

The BFL miner: A video intro

Allow me to introduce you to the Butterfly Labs 5GH/s "Jalapeño" Bitcoin miner.

A newbie and his miner

Ars Senior Business Editor Cyrus Farivar tapped me on the shoulder a few weeks back with a proposition. "I've got a Butterfly Labs Bitcoin mining box, " he explained. "There aren't that many in the wild right now. I'm working on a story about the company, but I'm about to go on vacation. Do you want to see if you can get the thing working while I'm out?"

I was intrigued. Bitcoin? That's the electronic currency that's quickly rocketed from lame nerd project to ludicrously valuable hot topic, right? I didn't know a lot about the world of Bitcoin other than the fact that "mining" them involved people building custom PCs with tons of video cards to handle the math. I certainly didn't know how to "mine" bitcoins myself or what to do with the things once I had them. I just knew that people eventually try to trade them in for cash somehow (but how to do that was also a total mystery).

Source: arstechnica.com