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It was mid December 2013 and the price of bitcoin had just soared to highs thought unreachable, but alas the gains were short lived and after hitting a high of 1200 on MT. Gox the price plummeted in quick succession. I was 20 years old, a sophomore in college at the time and had acquired 10 bitcoin through birthdays, Christmas ect. I had been involved in the trading scene for a while, mostly as a spectator and knew that a correction would most likely be coming to the market, despite many saying it was a temporary drop. I decided that if the price dropped down to $800 each I would cash out the funds and wait for a better entry point to get back into the market. So I set my stop loss at $800 and went to bed. I remember waking up, actively avoiding the price in the early morning but eventually I took a look and saw that my coins were sold. Not only were they sold, but the market had fallen to around $700 a coin. It was at this point that I bought back in and after all was said and done I had added a few coins to my stash, pulled them off Mt.Gox (one of my smarter moves) and held them in cold storage for the time being.The next few weeks would test many in the bitcoin community as the price went to lows of around $500 and back up to $900 in a matter of days. 

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It was at this point that I received notice from my school that something went wrong with my financial aid for the next semester and unless I was able to get a loan in a week or pay a lump sum of around $12,000 us dollars I would have to take the semester off. Although I was angry at first, I was presented with a unique opportunity, to explore ways to grow my bitcoin stash and make some extra money while I spent 4 months off. I looked towards trading at first but I was never overly great at entering and exiting with a profit, so I decided to look more in the speculative currency area. At this point with the price of bitcoin volatile and the collapse of Mt. Gox imminent, many were looking to alternative crypto currencies as a way to speculate on the next big thing. 

I once called 2014 the year of altcoins because the sheer amount being created on a day to day basis was insane. Everyday there was a new coin releasing that boasted new and revolutionary features that would be sure to make them the next bitcoin. While many bought into the idea, others like me speculated on the outcomes. More often than not I would buy many at the beginning and then sell them off when whales started to dump them. I was able to make some profit and thought that rather than buying the coins, I would make much more if I mined them and then sold them when the time was right. Because sha-256 asics had just breached the market at this point, most of the new coin creators used algorithms that were able to be mined on GPUs, primarily scrypt. However if you mined the coins and traded them for bitcoin you would still make a very good return. The altcoin speculation markets at this time was debatably at the largest it has ever been.

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I decided that if I was going to be home for the spring semester and the entire summer, that I could make real money running an altcoin mining operation in my house. I had at this point about $10,000 in bitcoin and started looking at parts to build my rigs. I had built computers in the past, but nothing like mining rigs. The key with building rigs was to use the cheapest possible components that would run the most powerful GPUs for the most profit. I remember making a few different kinds of builds because many people were doing the same thing I was. I was lucky and was able to get my video cards before the huge mining rush, but at some point used video cards were selling way over what retailers were charging, because they couldn’t keep them in stock long enough. In total I was able to build 5 rigs, each one propped up on a small aluminum open air case I purchased online. I remember getting boxes of parts for days and finally setting them all up in my room. 

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The only place available to set up the operation was in my bedroom, a small bedroom made smaller by a queen sized bed (Im 6 foot 4 inches so this was a necessity for me.) The room had 5 rigs all lined up running on 2 desks in an L shape, buzzing away as the day went on. The first day I turned them on I was mesmerized that I had finally gotten them up and running and that it was now time to target various altcoins. The place to be back then was the bitcointalk altcoin announcement forum to see what new coins were releasing. I had ways of picking which ones I thought were going to be successful, usually ones that offered features bitcoin did not like POS or full anonymity because it was likely these would be the ones speculators would pump on the open market. The entire first week, the returns were insane, I had already paid for 2 machines and the amount of new coins just kept increasing. It was at this point however that I started to realize returns on investment were falling and fast. In addition the massive amount of new altcoins made it hard to choose what coins to speculate on.

Although I was making a decent amount running my mining operation, there were some major drawbacks. After the first month when my mom saw my electricity bill she made me buy wattage calculators and take into account how much I was using which cut deeply into my profit. In addition my room got HOT, not your average hot, but your “it feels like a god damn sauna in here” hot. I would open all my windows and have a fan running on my face just so I could sleep. My friends would walk into my room and quickly step back out as if they had just opened an oven door. Soon the summer came and these problems just became amplified. 

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It was around July that I had finally made my return on investment (in bitcoin) and after electric fees, received all profit. However due to lower bitcoin prices I had actually lost money if you looked in USD terms. However I still did have the assets which I could sell at any point for a decent amount as the market was still pretty hungry for GPUs. I invested in some profitable coins and made a bunch of money on speculation during these times, most notably were dogecoin, blackcoin, vert, reddcoin, and goldcoin. I was never able to sell any at the peak of their prices, but I did get pretty close on a few of them and after everything was said and done I had around 19 bitcoin, 8 more than what I started with. Although I lost about 2 of them in trading and 7 in hacks I did pretty well. 

Early September was nearing and it was about time to start a new semester back at school, the market was becoming nearly unprofitable, so I decided to close up shop. I sold off my Hardware , made $5000 extra, which I was able to purchase a car for to commute at college as I was now living off campus with friends. Overall it was an experience that taught me a lot, from management of funds for repairs,  how to manage finances on excel and that sometimes having to sleep in a sauna to get those beautiful virtual coin rewards is totally worth it. 

-Calaber24p