Now, Taing runs 261 personal mining machines generating the world's most popular digital token."I invest in a lot of things. I have a lot of apartment buildings, I have senior living homes. I have GPU mines," continued Taing.
CNBC spoke to multiple Compass customers to better understand the appetite for small-scale mining as they increasingly compete with major industry players with massive operations. But Compass CEO Whit Gibbs says that's exactly the point: To capture market share for retail miners and put the network into the hands of the people.
"I wanted to do my part to secure the the bitcoin network — have my own hashrate, under my own power," said McClellan, referring to his share of the collective computing power of miners worldwide. McClellan, who took out a bitcoin-backed loan of $10,000 through Coinbase at an 8% interest rate to buy his single miner, says that his ROI is about two years. He is currently pulling in around $400 a month, though he has to pay $150 for hosting fees, so he nets about $250. But McClellan has plans to scale up his operation this year in Texas, Oklahoma, or Wyoming, since all three states are favorable to the bitcoin mining industry.