Mar 30, 2021 11:46:00

A fierce man who mines Bitcoin with Game Boy appears, can be mined with 4 AA batteries

Game Boy, which appeared in 1989 and

sold more than 118 million units in total, is a persistently popular game hardware with new software appearing even in 2017 and game development software released by volunteers. .. A fierce man who challenges Bitcoin mining using such a Game Boy has appeared.

Mining Bitcoin on the Game Boy --YouTube


Security researcher stacksmashing challenged Bitcoin mining with Game Boy. stacksmashing Mr., Mr. Elon Musk is the 'Tesla of the car is now available for purchase at Bitcoin' to Twitter was posted in the wake of that, things that Omoita' as 'trying to mine the bit coin'.

stacksmashing is considering purchasing a graphics board for use in Bitcoin mining. However, high-performance graphics boards suitable for Bitcoin mining were

very expensive , so I abandoned the purchase.

So, instead of a high-performance graphics board, stacksmashing decided to mine Bitcoin using Game Boy, which is 'very high-performance hardware that is rolling around a lot.'

Internet connection is required for Bitcoin mining, but Game Boy does not have an internet connection function.

However, Game Boy has a communication port for communicating with other devices.

stacksmashing decided to connect the Game Boy to the Internet via

a 'Raspberry Pi Pico ' connected to this communication port.

The device that stacksmashing prepared for Bitcoin mining on Game Boy looks like this. From left to right, 'Custom ROM with mining program installed', 'Raspberry Pi Pico', '

Level shifter ', 'Game Boy', and 'Self-made cable for connecting Game Boy and Raspberry Pi Pico'.

When all the above parts are combined, it looks like this. Now the hardware for mining Bitcoin is ready.

Next, stacksmashing created a mining program for

Game Boy 'ntgbtminer --Game Boy edition ' based on the mining program 'ntgbtminer ' developed in open source. Now you are all ready to mine Bitcoin with Game Boy.

When you launch the customized Game Boy ...

First, the normal startup screen is displayed.

After that, the mining program started and Bitcoin mining started. Displayed at the top of the screen is the mining log output to the PC via the Raspberry Pi Pico.

According to stacksmashing, the hash rate that shows the mining performance of Game Boy is 0.8H / s, which is 'only 125 trillion times slower' than the ASIC that specializes in Bitcoin mining. In addition, although a huge amount of power is consumed for Bitcoin mining, 'Game Boy runs on 4 AA batteries', and it is appealing for its power saving performance.

In addition, stacksmashing publishes the created software on his GitHub repository .