A modder managed to mine bitcoin on a Game Boy (very, very slowly)

If your desire to mine bitcoin has been thwarted by a lack of GPU stock and flimsy BIOS locks, YouTuber StackSmashing may be able to help. They created a Game Boy miner, which only needs a Game Boy console (and a slightly modified link cable), a Raspberry Pi Pico, and a regular computer (via Tom’s material).

The vanity of the project is that all mining takes place on a Game Boy stock, which was released 20 years before the invention of bitcoin. Of course, he needs help: the Game Boy can’t actually connect to the internet, and it can’t contain the entire blockchain. To deal with this, StackSmashing uses the Pico and Link cable to connect to the computer, which is running a bitcoin node. Once connected, the Game Boy will run the hash program from a programmable cartridge and even play a fun animation while operating.

Since the Game Boy is slightly slower than today’s dedicated mining machines (it apparently runs at 0.8 hashes per second, while some of the faster ASIC miners run 125 trillion times faster, at 100 terahashes per second), it’s astronomically unlikely that StackSmashing can actually mine bitcoin. However, when they set up a new no-registration Bitcoin blockchain, they were able to confirm that yes, the Game Boy managed to mine blocks successfully. Who is ready for GameCoin?