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How to mine $1 million in Bitcoin on an $800 laptop

Jayce Wagner
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Here’s the thing: Just about any device capable of banging a few numbers together can contribute to a cryptocurrency mining pool, and that means almost any device can technically mine any cryptocurrency you choose, even Bitcoin.

Thing is, it might take you a little while.

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Setting up

For our tests to figure out how long it might take you to make, say, $1,000,000 in Bitcoin using just a couple laptops, we used user-friendly mining pool NiceHash. Getting set up on NiceHash is as simple as creating an account and downloading a free software suite. Once it finishes installing, connect your NiceHash wallet by signing into the app, and then all you have to do is click start, and you’ll be rolling in bitcoins in no time!

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A dip in the pool

To figure out how long it’d take for us to strike it rich mining with just a laptop, we used an Asus ZenBook UX330UA with an integrated graphics chip. Just in case, we also had a couple others standing by — a Dell Inspiron 15 Gaming, a Dell XPS 13, a Microsoft Surface Pro, and a MacBook Pro 15.

Image used with permission by copyright holder

First, we ran the ZenBook on its own for about 24 hours to establish a baseline, but pretty soon after that we realized our little pool was going to need more power if we wanted to come anywhere close to our goal of $1,000,000 in bitcoin, so we fired up all of our laptops, bringing some serious horsepower to bear on the task.

Doing that was as simple as installing the NiceHash software on each laptop and connecting them all to our NiceHash wallet. After we left ’em running for another twenty-four hours, we were starting to see some real results.

Results

How much did we make with all of our laptops toiling away in the bitcoin mines? Well, we made about nine cents a day with just one laptop, and with all of them running we made around forty cents a day, give or take, depending on the current price of Bitcoin. That means it would take us an excess of 6,800 years to become bitcoin millionaires from mining off just a couple laptops.

So, while you can mine Bitcoin — or any other cryptocurrency — from any old laptop, you probably shouldn’t. Unless you have a couple thousand years to spare.

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Jayce Wagner
Jayce Wagner
Former Digital Trends Contributor
A staff writer for the Computing section, Jayce covers a little bit of everything -- hardware, gaming, and occasionally VR.
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