Sunday, November 24

Tag: Computer

Africans in Tech, East Africa

Inside the world of a Kenyan cryptocurrency miner

Eugene Mutai is well aware of the risks of mining virtual money. "Sometimes I ask myself: will the bubble pop? "He's right to be, cryptocurrencies are volatile. That hasn't stopped him from operating in this shadowy and controversial corner of the global financial system. A few years ago Mutai was working odd jobs on farms in rural Kenya. Now he's a cryptocurrency miner in Nairobi. His apartment where he mines, is dimly lit blue and drowned with the low drone of a self-made cryptocurrency computer rig. Mutai began researching cryptocurrencies last year. "I was curious about what was making these alternative coins drive. "Bitcoin was hard to mine by that point in time," Mutai tells CNN. There were already many Bitcoin miners. Instead, Mutai started mining Ethereum, a similar but less we...