Unnatural Resources

Why I quit my day job to become a Bitcoin miner

- Ethan Lou

LAST HALLOWEEN, I walked into my Calgary office building’s loading bay in search of a lost bicycle and instead found eight discarded computers. On a whim, I decided to rent a car to take them to my shoebox apartment in Chinatown, strip them for parts, and build cryptocurrency mining machines. I had grown up with an engineer father who involved me in electrical work; I knew how to build a computer even before my voice broke. So, although I was new to mining — in essence, running computers that facilitate cryptocurrency transactions — I understood the basics, and I googled the rest. Soon, I lived in constant fear that my landlady would complain about the amount of electricity my new machines were sucking up (enough to power a house). Running them around the clock produced a lot of heat, to the point that, even in winter, I kept a window open to my balcony and slept without a blanket.

Back then, on top of being a long-time investor in Bitcoin, I was also a full-time journalist covering oil, and my life was tied to the energy industry. Day in and day out, I would read and write about energy and talk with oilmen and oil women. Alberta produces nearly all of Canada’s oil, and it has gotten rich off it, frequently boasting some of the country’s highest incomes. But the province was hit hard when, in 2014, global oil production increased and demand declined. Per-barrel prices tumbled by more than 70 percent over two years. Over time, as oil and gas became a smaller portion of Alberta’s economy, I realized that the province could become fertile ground for a new multi-billion dollar industry: cryptocurrency mining.