Try Your Hand at Bitcoin Mining in this Simple Game

If you wonder how Bitcoin mining would go, but can’t afford to start, there is now a simulator to show you how it works.

Made by Reddit user u/BTCGamer, the game lets you buy rigs, fans, research better ones, expand your space, etc. Published on Newgrounds, the online community for entertainment including gaming, filming, audio and artwork composition, the game has close to 50,000 views as of the time of writing.

You start out with a small room that consists of six desks and 0.08 BTC. For now, you can only afford a desktop from Bell Computers that generates 0.01 BTC per minute and doesn’t use electricity. Once you make enough money, you can buy a 6 GPU Custom Mining Rig for 0.3 BTC and install it on the second table. It generates 0.3 BTC per minute and doesn’t use electricity either. Rigs can be overclocked (by making them “run faster” than originally intended), making them generate more BTC, but you can only overclock one rig.

From then on, you keep the game open and wait until you generate enough bitcoins to “research” new miners to improve the amount of BTC earned per minute. Keep in mind that most of these do use electricity, though, and the cost will be automatically deducted from your in-game balance. All miners generate heat as well – how much depends on the rig itself. Overheating the room makes you lose the game, so invest in coolers as well!

The visuals of the game are very rudimentary, and the music may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but it can be turned off. However, it is the product of a single person, so expectations should be low to begin with. The creator also takes everyone’s criticisms into account and adds features according to that.

Although there is practically no replayability value, the game is a great insight into how mining works – and how boring it is most of the time. It has a score of 3.58 out of 5 on Newgrounds, and 179 people added it to their Faves. On social network Reddit, the game received pretty positive acclaim, where one user even mined more than 21 million – a significant amount of time spent in the game, at the very least.

It’s no Witcher 3, GTA V or Skyrim, but for all of you who want to learn more about crypto mining, check it out!