By gum and gopher, it’s happenin’ again! Just like in aught-one when Ol’ Clem struck it rich diggin’ up Pets.com stock before those rascals went belly up. Folks nowadays are hootin’ and hollerin’ over Bitcoin.

These here are magic coins that live inside yer lightning box, protected by some new-fangled doohickey called a “blockchain,” which I reckon is just a fancy way of sayin' “a diary that tattles on everyone.” But I can’t be bothered to know what any of it does. All I know is, we’re gonna be rich. Or my name ain’t Dusty “Hashrate” Prescott, angel investor and cryptocurrency prospector of the Pacific Northwest. Yipee!

They got these mining farms all over yonder—from the great plains, to the northern territories, and even the Far East. Everyone’s hoping to get their mitts on some bitcoin:

Digital gold. Computated cabbage. Saylor’s simoleons.

It’s on the blockchain just ripe fer the pickin’, waiting to be mined, dagnabit.

But there ain’t no pannin’ and pickin’ here. No siree. These folks are using machines. Big ones! Rows and rows of contraptions buzzing louder than a beehive and solvin’ complicated arithmetic puzzles and what not.

O’er the years I done my fair share of mining, let me tell you. Built my own rig outta a busted grain binder and my nephew’s old gaming PC. And when that thing fired up? Hoo boy. The dang fans blew hotter than a preacher’s armpits in July!

So, believe ol’ Dusty when he tells ya, this ain’t fer everyone. Nowadays, any Patagonia-vested yahoo with dreams bigger than a server farm in Fresno thinks he can strike it rich with an ol’ ASIC and a Mountain Dew-stained Alienware laptop. Before long their electrical bill is rocketing higher than a jackrabbit in a geyser, and all they got to show fer it is .0000034 bitcoin and a CPU that’s been fried three ways to Sunday.

And then there’s the fellers chasin’ altcoins. I met one young jackanape who sold his family’s Bushwick brownstone and several thousand dollars worth of Nvidia stock fer some cockamamie crypto called SCROTECOIN. Last I saw him, he was livin’ in a converted Cybertruck, tryin’ to trade NFTs of steampunk racoons and still blabbing about how SCROTE is about to moon.

And don’t get me started on them gas fees. Land’s sakes! Try to move some Ethereum and it charges ya twenty-five bucks just to sneeze. And if ya forget yer private key, which is just a long, angry string of gibberish, they say, “Tough beans, parnder.” Yer money’s gone. Poof. Vanished into the void like a gambler’s promise.

Worst part is tryin’ to explain it to the missus. “No, darlin’, I didn’t buy nothin’ foolish, I’m investin’ in a decentralized blockchain protocol that’ll disrupt traditional financial paradigms.” Next thing you know, she done hid yer power cords and is threatenin’ to run off with a feller in a more respectable line of work, like scalping Pokemon cards.

So whadda ya say, greenhorn? Reckon you up fer the tough but fair life of bitcoin mining?

Well, brand HODL on my rear and call me a degen, you are ready! Grab yer self a rig, slap on a few surge protectors and get ready to watch yer net worth explode and then evaporate in the blink of an eye. Because my GPU's whinin’ louder than a mule with a toothache. And the ol girl’s either strikin’ it rich, or catchin’ fire.