Mining Bitcoin on the Game Boy [video] | Hacker News Reader

Mining Bitcoin on the Game Boy [video]

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133 pointsfaebi22 comments

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This is my video, happy to answer any questions

Not a question: I followed and really enjoyed your series on [REDACTED] as each video came out =)

That's great, thank you! I had a ton of fun on that one.

I like how they just EOR'd the data and called it a day =)

Do you see any reason why the GBA couldn't perform the role of a hardware wallet? Secure element excluded of course.

Gameboy is really slow when compared to modern hardware. One ECDSA signature that takes around 100ms on Trezor (32-bit CPU @ 120 MHz) would take around a minute on GameBoy (8-bit CPU @ ~4 MHz.

If we're talking about GameBoy Advance (32-bit CPU @ 25 MHz) - this more plausible but still 5 times slower than Trezor.

I think waiting a full minute is a perfectly justifiable trade-off for a dystopian future that at least forces people to have an iconic '80's handheld strapped to their hip. If we're headed toward a dystopia, we can at least try to set the stage for a certain standard of aesthetics.

It could perform it, but as the other comment has outlined it would be very slow (and not very secure)!

Offtopic but I really liked the explanation animations, which software do you use for that?

Thank you! I made those in Keynote, exported as video, and then basically freeze-framed each slide to align it with the voice-over.

WHich has a more powerful processor, the gameboy or the raspberry pi?

Came to this video expecting a cheeky joke, left with a genuine understanding of how to implement a basic Bitcoin miner

This is awesome!

This video is really well done, good work

I think the funniest part about this, is that the pico used for the cable probably can do miss hashes per second

Obligatory: http://www.righto.com/2014/09/mining-bitcoin-with-pencil-and... ; http://www.righto.com/2019/07/bitcoin-mining-on-apollo-guida... ; http://www.righto.com/2015/05/bitcoin-mining-on-55-year-old-...

I'm not sure why this was downvoted, but perhaps some context may help.

Here nayuki linked a few posts made by kens about mining Bitcoins using weird old hardware (if you classify pencil and paper as hardware). A Gameboy is perhaps not vintage enough for kens :) .

Old HN discussion of these links:

* Pencil and Paper: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8380110 (653 points, 104 comments) and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15950599 (642 points, 158 comments)

* Apollo computer: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20383561 (217 points, 107 comments)

* IBM 1401: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9593412 (162 points, 34 comments)

Would've been more fitting on the Pyramid: https://theoffice.fandom.com/wiki/Pyramid.

how to mine bitcoin on a gameboy

1. make an enteretaining video about trying to mine bitcoin on a gameboy

2. include bitcoin donation link

3. wait to see if you have sufficiently amused people with absurd numbers of bitcoin for them to donate some

[video]

Great, now it's going to be impossible to get a vintage Game Boy on ebay for under $10,000, not to mention making AA batteries impossible to find at retail.

But this could spark innovations, like an adapter to put a 3-fan RTX 3080 graphics card on it.

Or a portable snap-on expansion to power it with 8 car batteries.

Global warming solved.

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