According to a report from Dallas News, this sibling duo has been bringing in thousands of dollars mining Ethereum. While most kids are playing with their computers, siblings Ishaan and Aanya Thakur are making money with theirs. The bother-sister duo currently makes $32,000 a month from their Ethereum mining operation which they started in their garage.
The pair had gotten interested in cryptocurrencies after their father had told them about Bitcoin. At the time, the siblings were interested in buying the cryptocurrency, but because the price had grown so much, they opted for mining. But mining for bitcoin had become an oversaturated market, they found. Hence, they opted for the second-largest cryptocurrency by market cap; Ethereum.
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They had started by mining Ethereum using an old gaming laptop that they had. And in the first month of mining, they had made $1,000 from their small operation. This motivated the pair to take their activities to the next level, given the profits they had acquired using just an old gaming laptop. Crypto mining requires chips to mine and this is where the siblings ran into their first problem.
COVID-Induced Chip Shortage
Siblings Ishaan and Aanya wanted to expand their mining operations, but due to the pandemic, there has been a chip shortage. Manufacturers had not been able to keep up with demand due to countries going into lockdown and people not being able to go to work. So getting a chip required for mining has become harder than ever. The duo had two options; buy chips from resellers online at a marked-up price or wait for chips to become available. They chose the latter.
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9-year-old Aanya and 14-year-old Ishaan signed up for supply updates from retailers like Best Buy and Micro Center. When chips and hardware needed for their mining operations were available, they would get alerted by email. And the siblings would line up outside the retailers before they opened the next day to be able to get the parts.
This strategy has proven to be profitable for them as the duo has been able to expand their mining operations beyond their home garage. Their rigs were generating too much heat to stay in their home garage and so now they have an air-conditioned data center in downtown Dallas where they keep most of their mining rigs. While they still keep about 30 cards in their garage.
Expanding The College Fund With Ethereum
The siblings save most of their returns from mining. But they have had to sell some portions of their crypto in order to pay for things like electricity and parts to expand their mining operation. Profits from the mining operation, Ishaan explained, go to their college fund. Both siblings have dreams of becoming doctors and want to go to the University of Pennsylvania, in the case of Ishaan, and the University of New York, in the case of Aanya. And they are hoping mining Ethereum will help them fulfill their dreams of going to college.
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As for the cost of electricity, their returns far outweigh the power bill they get for mining. For the previous month, they had to pay a total of $2,500 – $850 for their home electric bill and $1,650 for their data center electric bill. This might be a high power bill, but it pales in comparison to the $32,000 that the siblings are bringing in for their mining operation.
Their current setup consists of 14 rigs, which have 82 processors used to mine Ethereum. Then five rigs with 12 processors which the siblings used to mine Ravencoin because these processors are not powerful enough to mine Ethereum. The siblings plan to grow Flifer Technologies, which is the name of their company and have currently ordered four additional mining rigs from China with built-in processors.
Ethereum price continues to trend above $3,000 | Source: ETHUSD on TradingView.com
Featured image from Dallas News, chart from TradingView.com