The "Holy Grail" of Passive Income Generation Revealed....

This is a story about the "birth" of perhaps the greatest opportunity of establishing financial self-determination that I have seen in the last 42 years of my journey in entrepreneurship.

I live in the Southern California paradise of La Jolla. Each day I "work" at my favorite coffee bistro, where I meet interesting new people who are gathered around me on the outside patio of this beautiful establishment.

(see my blog below about this perfect "entrepreneurial work spot.")

https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/work-where-heart-peter-burns/

A year ago last December, I started a very powerful FinTech product that I named the "Entrepreneur Credit Card." This unique start-up financing vehicle and its initial (and subsequent success) are covered in the blog below:

https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/1000000-unsecured-funding-approved-from-entrepreneurs-peter-burns/

We were able to help many individuals ($2 Million or so) with their start-up and expansion capital needs and our Underwriter has provided over $250 million in only 1 1/2 years since this product has been offered to consumers. While the process of obtaining this debt capital is efficient (www.entcreditcard.com/imagine), alas, many applicants are turned down simply because their credit has been "dinged" and their "all important" FICO score (main determinant of funding acceptance) is too low for approval.

I was determined to change the odds for those people who were turned down before and the ones that needed our funding but were unable to qualify. So...I put this venture together and launched it last week...

https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/second-bite-apple-consumers-peter-burns/

I got my start at the McIntire School of Business at the University of Virginia in one of this country's 1st courses in entrepreneurship in 1977. After turning my business plan (my only "A" in college!) into my 1st "official" business of renting mopeds on Nantucket Island that summer. Thus, I started my lifelong career in entrepreneurship, leaving the University after returning the remainder of my US Army ROTC Scholarship to the "Alternate" and expanded my 1st rental business across the world to 100 locations. I returned to my "academic roots" at UVa to guest lecture at my professor's "Entrepreneurship" class for the next 10 years until my professor retired. I was "hooked" with wanting to teach my own brand of "real life entrepreneurship."

Gratefully, I received that chance when I began teaching "Ready, Fire, Aim" at ASU's Barrett Honors College as an Adjunct Faculty Member. The first class of 19 brilliant young Honors College students that first semester morphed into 94 students by the second semester, The entire program then was moved to Grand Canyon University where I founded the country's first accredited College of Entrepreneurship in 2007. 11 years later, I remain as fiercely dedicated to helping young people achieve entrepreneurial success as I did then. See my mission below:

https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/why-i-still-try-help-some-millennials-peter-burns/

Of course, everyone...from the jobless Millenial to the "cubicle dwelling wannapreneur" deserves a piece of the American Dream so I try to hold the course by creating that path to success. See link below:

https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/experiment-capitalism-peter-burns/

After 42 years of creating and launching new ventures, I sense opportunities and act upon them as instinctively as a duck takes to water. I honestly cannot help it. lol

During the past week or so, I saw the same gentleman around my age, reading the paper and talking on his cell across from me at another fire pit on the patio of the coffee bistro that I visit each morning. We exchanged pleasantries and each morning shared a little of what we did and what brought us to La Jolla. This nice man was a "techie," something of which I simply am not. He turned out to be a Cryptocurrency Data Mining Industry Icon...running that Industry's most recognized newsletter following trends and nearly daily news on this esoteric (to me) subject. In a word...I simply didn't "get it." lol

Still...my nature is to inquire and learn, so each morning, the nice man educated me on tidbit after another in "dummy-downed" layman's terms all about Cryptocurrency and its "Mining." My natural inclination is to conjecture a way to monetize new knowledge by assembling seemingly unrelated components and "connecting the dots." The story below shows the "grassroots" strategy of the young entrepreneur starting in the field I was now studying...

The secret lives of students who mine cryptocurrency in their dorm rooms

WRITTEN BY

Karen Hao

January 06, 2018

Mark was a sophomore at MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts, when he began mining cryptocurrencies more or less by accident.

In November 2016, he stumbled on NiceHash, an online marketplace for individuals to mine cryptocurrency for willing buyers. His desktop computer, boosted with a graphics card, was enough to get started. Thinking he might make some money, Mark, who asked not to use his last name, downloaded the platform’s mining software and began mining for random buyers in exchange for payments in bitcoin. Within a few weeks, he had earned back the $120 cost of his graphics card, as well as enough to buy another for $200.

From using NiceHash, he switched to mining ether, then the most popular bitcoin alternative. To increase his computational power, he scrounged up several unwanted desktop computers from a professor who “seemed to think that they were awful and totally trash.” When equipped with the right graphics cards, the “trash” computers worked fine.

Each time Mark mined enough ether to cover the cost, he bought a new graphics card, trading leftover currency into bitcoin for safekeeping. By March 2017, he was running seven computers, mining ether around the clock from his dorm room. By September his profits totaled one bitcoin—worth roughly $4,500 at the time. Now, four months later, after bitcoin’s wild run and the diversification of his cryptocoin portfolio, Mark estimates he has $20,000 in digital cash. “It just kind of blew up,” he says.

Exploiting a crucial competitive advantage and motivated by profit and a desire to learn the technology, students around the world are launching cryptocurrency mining operations right from their dorm rooms. In a typical mining operation, electricity consumption accounts for the highest fraction of operational costs, which is why the largest bitcoin mines are based in China. But within Mark’s dorm room, MIT foots the bill. That gives him and other student miners the ability to earn higher profit margins than most other individual miners.

In the months since meeting Mark, I’ve interviewed seven other miners from the US, Canada, and Singapore who ran or currently run dorm room cryptomining operations, and I’ve learned of many more who do the same. Initially, almost every student began mining because it was fun, cost-free, and even profitable. As their operations grew, so did their interest in cryptocurrency and in blockchain, the underlying technology. Mining, in other words, was an unexpected gateway into discovering a technology that many predict will dramatically transform our lives.

While it’s impossible to estimate how many dorm room cryptominers exist globally, it’s likely their numbers are growing as cryptocurrency values continue to balloon. Once they graduate, these students are poised to play a critical role in shaping the next technology revolution.

A dorm room operation

Years before meeting Mark, when I was a junior at MIT, I had heard rumors of my peers mining bitcoin. After its value exploded, and along with it, the necessary computational and electrical power to mine it, I assumed that dorm room mining was no longer viable. What I hadn’t considered was the option of mining alternate cryptocurrencies, including ethereum, which can and do thrive as small-scale operations.

When mining for cryptocurrency, computational power, along with low power costs, is king. Miners around the world compete to solve math problems for a chance to earn digital coins. The more computational power you have, the greater your chances of getting returns.

 The more computational power you have, the greater your chances of getting returns.

 To profitably mine bitcoin today, you need an application-specific integrated circuit, or ASIC—specialized hardware designed for bitcoin-mining efficiency. An ASIC can have 100,000 times more computational power than a standard desktop computer equipped with a few graphics cards. But ASICs are expensive—the most productive ones easily cost several thousands of dollars—and they suck power. If bitcoin prices aren’t high enough to earn more revenue than the cost of electricity, the pricey hardware cannot be repurposed for any other function.

In contrast, alternate currencies like ethereum are “ASIC-resistant,” because ASICS designed to mine ether don’t exist. That means ether can be profitably mined with just a personal computer. Rather than rely solely on a computer’s core processor (colloquially called a “CPU”), however, miners pair it with graphics cards (“GPUs”) to increase the available computational power. Whereas CPUs are designed to solve one problem at a time, GPUs are designed to simultaneously solve hundreds. The latter dramatically raises the chances of getting coins.

Most of the dorm room miners I spoke to mined alternative currencies with personal computers and graphics cards. Some used their desktops, while others built their own computers. A few of them even used their laptops. Pretty much everyone already had graphics cards for gaming or other purposes before realizing that they met the hardware requirements for mining.

“It just so happened that at the time I was reading up on mining, I was building a personal computer for purposes of video editing…some AI stuff, and whatever I throw at it,” says Arjun Singh Brar, a recent graduate of Singapore University of Technology and Design. With access to his dorm’s free electricity, he thought, “Why don’t I just give [mining] a try.”

Free electricity and massive amounts of heat

By Mark’s estimation, four of the other 35 residents on his floor also have homegrown rigs. Unlike his setup, most just use a single desktop with one or two graphics cards.

None of them really know what MIT’s policy is on their profit-generating activities, so they take precautions to avoid getting caught. “I have a lot of experience with exactly what outlets in my room can pull what amounts of current before I trip the breaker,” Mark says. He knows it trips if he ever overclocks any one of his computers by running its CPU at a faster speed than it was designed for. That causes his entire operation to shut down, which could draw the scrutiny of the university’s facilities department. (MIT did not respond to request for comment.)

 “All chocolate I accidentally leave here melts, but it’s not horribly uncomfortable.”

 So far, everyone on Mark’s floor has flown under the radar. MIT monitors electricity use by building rather than by individual, and the miners almost certainly don’t pull enough power to make their dorm’s electricity use look anomalous. All of the other miners I spoke to had similar experiences; their universities raised no objections—either out of ignorance or apathy. 1 (SUTD and Stanford did not respond to requests for comment. Babson College said it didn’t “have anything to add on this subject.”)

Mark figures the university owes him, anyway. “The only thing that I’m concerned about is if somebody at MIT comes after me for unnecessarily using their electricity, which I think is kind of silly considering how much it costs 2 to go here,” he says. James Spann, a sophomore at the Rochester Institute of Technology who also mines crypto, echoed Mark’s reasoning: “The electricity and internet are part of the tuition.”

What dorm miners don’t pay for in electricity, they pay for in discomfort. Even without the radiator running in the middle of a Boston winter, the temperature in Mark’s room is well above desirable. His rig is “essentially a 2,000-watt heater running at all times,” Mark says. “All chocolate I accidentally leave here melts, but it’s not horribly uncomfortable.” This is even after he moved his two most efficient mining rigs to his girlfriend’s room three floors below because the heat in the summer was unbearable.

Other miners described how they handled the massive amounts of heat—and what their significant others and roommates put up with. Rahul, a Stanford class of 2015 electrical engineer, drew his girlfriend’s ire for his rig. “It was very loud and blew a lot of hot air. My girlfriend was very upset that it had to be on at night,” he laughs.

When Nicholas Abouzeid, a senior at Babson College in Wellesley, Massachusetts, began mining from home in high school, he ran the software off his Macbook Pro and kept his bedroom window open to regulate his laptop’s temperature. “It would get to 35 degrees in my room, and I was shivering in bed, but my computer was very happy,” he says. A few months before leaving for college, when he built his own computer to mine crypto more efficiently, he surrounded it with fans to disperse the heat.

Patrick Cines, a recent college graduate who mined in his dorm room at Penn State University in State College, Pennsylvania, was particularly innovative. To regulate his room’s temperature in the August heat without air conditioning, he hacked together a ventilation solution out of Home Depot dryer tubes. “The ones that people usually connect to their dryers in their houses to put out all the heat,” he explains.

Fast gains and faster losses

In the fast-paced, unregulated world of crypto, a fortune gained one day can be quickly lost the next, not just because of the market’s high volatility. Lack of regulation increases susceptibility to fraud and security breaches.

On Dec. 6 last year, for example, hackers penetrated NiceHash, the platform that introduced Mark to mining, and whisked away 4,736.42 bitcoin, worth more than $60 million based on the day-of price. Mark had returned to NiceHash after mining ether, but fortunately only lost roughly $300 of unpaid bitcoin. He immediately switched to using a different cryptomining marketplace. NiceHash froze its operations for two weeks.

 “I got burned.”

 While Mark’s encounter with bad actors left him relatively unscathed, Rahul, the Stanford graduate, suffered a much greater loss. In December, 2013, he spent a couple thousand dollars on an ASIC to mine bitcoin. Within the first three months, he mined what was at the time worth $10,000, he says. (According to CoinDesk, the price of bitcoin during that time averaged around $800.) Confident that the price would rise, he purchased another $10,000 of bitcoin with his own money and placed all of his holdings on Mt. Gox, then the largest and most trusted bitcoin exchange in the world.

In February of 2014, Mt. Gox got hacked and lost 740,000 bitcoins. The Japanese exchange declared bankruptcy and Rahul lost every penny. Despite joining the subsequent class action lawsuit, he told me he still hasn’t seen any of his investment returned.

“Our BTC, plus the additional investments we made, would have been worth well over six figures at today’s prices,” he says. “I got burned.”

Ahead of the curve

Though dorm room mining may seem trivial, it’s creating a new generation of cryptocurrency experts. Many miners say their experiences taught them crucial lessons about the technology, and some have already substantially profited as well.

Abouzeid at Babson, for example, was introduced to crypto in December 2013 while he was still a junior in high school. His friend showed him the lighthearted, meme-obsessed subreddit for dogecoin, a new bitcoin alternative, named after the viral doge meme. “I was like, ‘Oh this is fun and kind of silly. I’ll buy in,'” he says.

He began dabbling with mining doge (the dogecoin unit of currency) on his Macbook Pro. In January 2014, the subreddit pooled together $30,000, or 26.5 million doge, to send the Jamaican bobsled team to the Sochi Winter Olympics. Two months later, it pooled together $55,000, over 100 million doge, to sponsor a driver in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race. Both stunts made Abouzeid realize the power of crypto.

 “Now I can look back and go, ‘Wow look, I know more about bitcoin than most people!'”

 Invigorated, he dug into understanding bitcoin and built his first specialized mining computer at home. “It ran for three months until my mother got our electricity bill,” he says. Once he arrived at Babson, the university’s free electricity gave him unfettered freedom to dive deep into the crypto world.

“I don’t know if I could justify my interest in it initially,” he says. “Of course now I can look back and go, ‘Wow look, I know more about bitcoin than most people! This is totally a good investment.’ But at first it was just fun.” The experience has inspired him to work in the industry in the future.

Akash Nath, a class of 2016 Boston University graduate, began a bitcoin derivatives trading platform called Alt-Options with a few other classmates several months after he began mining in his dorm room as a sophomore. He and the other founders sold the company for an undisclosed amount in April 2016, earning a neat return before even graduating from college. “It worked out pretty nicely,” he says.

Now 23, Nath runs a company unrelated to crypto, but maintains his network in the crypto and blockchain community. If he returns to the crypto world, he plans to educate new users. There are “very few clear resources to properly direct and educate newcomers,” he says.

An impending revolution

No one yet fully understands how cryptocurrencies will change how we transact business with one another, but many experts predict they will spark a revolution. That thinking was reflected in 2017 when bitcoin’s price rose 1,000%, yet still fell short of the top 10 cryptocurrency gainers of the year; when Estonia announced that it would pursue plans to launch a crypto-token, making it the first country to do so; and when major Japanese and South Korean banks began trialing blockchain-based payments (paywall).

“I fundamentally believe that blockchain technologies are going to improve the world,” says Abouzeid. “I don’t know when, I don’t know how. I don’t know if it’s going to be bitcoin or ethereum or whatever coin is coming up today or tomorrow, but I enjoy it and it’s fun.

“It’s fun to be part of the ride.”

So, literally days after a chance meeting with my new Cryptocurrency friend over coffee...I think I may have figured out the largest passive income generator that has ever been envisioned. Literally!

My new Cryptocurrency Mining friend has pioneered a "machine" that successfully and flawlessly "mines" Cryptocoins...in and out, all day, every day...producing $400 of "coin" value each month. The "machines" can simply be "stacked" or added to and stored in a state-of-the-art data center. My friend has ordered 260,000 chips with which to construct the equal number of "machines" and is in negotiation for acquiring the first 3 mega-data centers at a price tag of $8 million apiece. Do the "math"...he is looking at a "coin" income of some $104 million of "coin" value...every month!

So...what's my angle here? Obviously, my new coffee friend doesn't need my raw ingenuity to make him even more successful...but doesn't he? I am a niche market entrepreneur...creating value out of virtually nothing in place now...but making it so. I immediately saw the "gap" that my friend merely overlooked but was gapingly obvious to me. I would create a "Business to Consumer" (B2C) model by offering a passive cash flow resource to all of those job-challenged Millenials and "wannapreneurs" that yearned for steady income untouched by job loses or uncontrollable economic shifts.

Asking my friend why literally "everyone" wouldn't want to have one or likely many of his passive cash-generating "machines" for themselves (?)... he simply answered that the cost of acquisition for one or many "machines" might simply be out of the range of the "regular joe" desiring to enter the "crypto-mining" phenomenon. I countered with..."What if I could finance these purchases with highly desirable terms, such as interest-free for 1-2 year credit lines up to $175,000?" He quickly replied..."By putting the two together, I would have created the "Holy Grail of Passive Income Generation." He then added..."You would become a billionaire overnight."

Smiling like the fabled "Cheshire Cat" of Lewis Carroll's "Alice in Wonderland" I carefully outlined my Plan of Action to my new friend...and hoped-for partner.

I would arrange to buy as many of my friend's crypto coin mining "machines" at the best possible price, creating an offer of the "ultimate passive income generator" to consumers, complete with unbeatable unsecured financing in order to effect their desired monthly income. At $400 per month, 12 "machines" could generate nearly $5000*** in net monthly income. These 12 "machines" would cost the consumer $60,000 at $5,000 per unit.

My Entrepreneur Credit Card would offer the funding to virtually anyone with the requisite credit of a 700 FICO score threshold. See www.entcreditcard.com/imagine. The unbeatable terms of a 12-21 months interest-free credit line, with 1%-2% monthly principal repayment (meaning once paid, available immediately) effectively meant...."free" money to invest for 1-2 years. The money earned from the passive investment return equated to a 100% ROI during the first year and literally an infinite return every year forward. One year's earning paid off the entire investment at zero cost...with the credit line intact and available to re-invest and double up...literally every year thence.

For those individuals whose FICO score simply didn't qualify for my Entrepreneur Credit Card funding out the gate...my new innovation of "repairing and enhancing" one's credit would have you ready to apply and receive the investment funding within 60 days or so. Each applicant would simply go through our new Program at www.entcredit.com.

The prototype of the "machine" has been vetted and proven. My financing vehicle has funded over $250,000,000 in the last 1 1/2 years. The Program of "Repairing and Enhancing" one's damaged credit is valid and provable. An Agreement between my new friend and me is in process, the website and collateral material being prepared and 11 eager "early adopters" are going through the application process of being qualified as we speak.

Everyone needs money. Passive Income is the generally unfilled mantra of everyone. I figured it out. Let's see how things manifest.

Want your own piece of the "American Dream?" Reach out to me at [email protected] and see for yourself. :)

See www.peterjburns3.com to learn about Peter J. Burns, III and his 4 decade-long "Adventures in Capitalism."

*** Earnings Disclaimer:

?While the digital currency market is no exact science, we make every effort to accurately represent the potential earnings one can obtain. It should be noted that earnings and income from our state-of- the-art optimized “Easy Box” (Artificial intelligence AI)/Rendering/Machine Learning/Data Mining/Crypto-mining) are estimates only and what we believe can be earned. It is not guaranteed that anyone will earn the levels of income stated herewith, and one must accept the risk that the earnings and income may vary per individual.

The results one may acquire can differ based on many variables such as an increases/decreases in the market, number of Easy Boxes, how often the Easy Box is performing its many functions in addition to mining Cryptocurrency, etc. Users have a greater potential to increase their earnings by setting forth additional effort within the Easy.

As with any specialized market, there is no assurance of any past earnings being replicated in the future. In this industry there are risks and we cannot guarantee one’s future results and/or success based on previous outcomes. Of course, there are unknown risks and we cannot foresee which may impact one’s outcomes. We are not responsible for the presence of any risks and one’s actions.

Involvement in the use of our Easy Box and services shall be based on one’s due diligence. It is agreed that we are not liable for any success or failure of one’s involvement that is directly or indirectly related to our Easy Box and/or services and the different Cryptocurrency markets.***