The man is in the business of making money.
He runs his own private equity firm with $250 million in assets under management, has worked in data science and analytics at Apple, and he got into the world of digital currency before it was popular to make a passive bet.
The world's most popular digital token is generated by 261 personal mining machines.
Taing told CNBC that he likes making money.
I invest in a lot of things. I own a lot of apartment buildings and senior living homes. I like to look at where I can get some good arbitrage advantage, and I thought I could get more bitcoin by mining.
A proof-of-work mining model means that miners around the world run high-powered computers to simultaneously create new and verify transactions. The process requires a lot of equipment and electricity. Taing decided to outsourcing most of that work by using a service that hosts, supplies, and operates mining rigs for retail miners who don't want to deal with the logistics of physically handling mining equipment themselves.
According to Taing, the experiment is working out well so far. 200 of his mining rigs are hosted through Compass in Nebraska and Canada. According to digital receipts he provided CNBC, they generate about $111,000 a month.
Taing buys and sells mining hardware to retail customers on the marketplace. They buy one or two at a time and are not price sensitive.
CNBC spoke to multiple customers of Compass to better understand the appetite for small-scale mining as they compete with major industry players with massive operations. The point is to capture market share for retail miners and put the network into the hands of the people.
The goal has always been to get 5% of the network controlled.
A lot of people who would normally invest in real estate are instead investing in mining, because they are able to see a faster return on mining than they would if they were buying a rental property.
Eng Taing evaluates an ex-GM plant to repurpose for bitcoin mining.The self-proclaimedplebs, who stack the smallest of the coins known as satoshis, are one of the clients.
Jon McClellan is a lobbyist for AT&T and he has a single miner with a company in Oklahoma. He wants to mine for ideological and financial reasons.
McClellan said he wanted to do his part to secure the network by having his own hashrate.
I knew if I bought a miner, I'd be buying it every day.
The only retail mining company that seemed accessible to the average person was Compass. Customers can buy new or used mining machines for between $4,500 and $25,800 on the website, then locate them in partner data centers and take care of the physical logistics and subsequent maintenance.
The return on investment for personal mining depends on a number of factors, including the upfront cost of buying gear, the number of mining machines you're running, the cost of electricity and hosting, and pool fees, which allow a single miner to combine their hashing power with thousands.
McClellan, who took out a $10,000 loan with an 8% interest rate to buy his single miner, says that his return is about two years. He makes $400 a month, but he has to pay $150 for hosting fees, so he makes about $250. McClellan plans to expand his operation this year in Texas, Oklahoma, or Wyoming, which are favorable to the mining industry.
Taing says he has about 18 months to achieve a profit margin of at least 70%. Taing has a special rate for pool fees.
According to the CEO of the company, the majority of their customers are retail and miners who invest between $10,000 and $50,000.
The majority of our business has been in that area over the last six months.
A man named Nevin Bannister is trying to build out a large-scale bitcoin mining operation in order to take it to the public market.
They are a great option. They help you buy machines, plug them in for you, and maintain them.
Over the course of the year, Bannister has bought 6,000 rigs. Most of them are housed in Oklahoma and a few in Canada.
He told CNBC that each rig should produce about.015 bitcoin a month. If 1,500 rigs were used, it would produce 270 bitcoins a year, or $10.7 million.
I'm a serialentrepreneur. I've had several companies that I've sold, and I just love learning new things, and I've founded start-ups that have sold for a combined value of over $800 million.
Smaller-scale miners will benefit from the investment made by institutional buyers, because it will bring down costs and make more space available for retail clients.
Compass Mining customer Eng Taing’s bitcoin mining setup.Block is looking to make it easier for the little guy to start mining.
Block's general manager for hardware, Thomas Templeton, laid out the company's plans for next steps in a string of tweets.
The goal is to make the process of creating new bitcoins more distributed and efficient, from buying to setting up to maintenance.
One of the biggest barriers to entry is the difficulty in finding mining rigs, expensive and unpredictable delivery. Block is open to making a newASIC, which is the specialized gear used to mine for bitcoin.
Compass Mining customer Eng Taing’s bitcoin mining setup.Block is looking to improve reliability and the user experience of mining.
There are a lot of issues we have heard about with current systems. They become non-functional almost every day, so they need a time-consuming reboot. They are too loud for home use and we want to build something that works.
The mission of the project is democratizing access to mining.
In October, just a few months after the U.S. overtook China for the first time, Dorsey wrote that mining isn't accessible to everyone. There isn't enough incentive for people to run a miner for themselves.
Another player is welcome in the retail mining space.
It's going to be beneficial to both of us.
It will be more of a home-based, low power consumption product, but it will get people that first taste of mining. He thinks that as individuals get the bug to grow their hashrate they will look at other companies to expand their operations.
I think that Jack wants to get a lot of people to adopt the digital currency, and he's going to throw a lot of money at it in order to get more people to pay attention to it.
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