April
has been a wild month for Bitcoin. For those who follow this new
virtual currency, you may have noticed how the value has been doing wild
swings, from around $53 to over $200, back in the hundred of dollars
within just a few days. Needless to say, those who invested in getting
some Bitcoins early and managed to sell at the right time are making
quite a lot of money. But Bitcoin is also a boon for inventors and
innovators.
What
makes Bitcoin so great for many is how the currency itself works.
Unlike traditional currencies, the increase in the amount of coins out
there is based on hashing out algorithmic functions. As time goes by,
the difficulty in these hashing functions goes up, which means there are
less coins being introduced, until all new coin intakes stop all
together sometimes in a few years. Until then however, there are people
that have made it their mission to manufacture the most efficient
hardware to create these Bitcoins. Right now, the consensus is that ASIC
machines, those created with high powered GPUs, are the best bet to
mine Bitcoins.
The
technology is such that a properly built ASIC device will pay for
itself in Bitcoins. That means making the device, then leaving it
running, eating electrical power, it will manage to hash enough coins to
pay for the cost of running it, depending on the current value of
Bitcoin. So if you can mass produce them, and run multiple in tandem,
then you can create quite a wealth. One particularly awaited unit is the
Jalapeno device from Butterfly Labs. The units have been delayed and
many were starting to doubt that they would ever ship. But as the
unboxing video above shows, they are very real and now starting to ship
to pre-order customers. If you are interested in the inner workings of
mining Bitcoins, check the video out.
READ ALSO: The 2013 IMGA Winners For Best VIdeo Games For Mobile
