Indian-origin siblings strike gold in mining crypto assets

After their father sparked an interest in cryptocurrencies, Indian-origin siblings, Ishaan Thakur and Aanya Thakur began mining crypto assets and are earning over $30,000 (Rs 22.23 lakh in Indian currency) in a month from it. Fourteen-year-old Ishaan and nine-year-old Aanya, living in Texas, were recently in the news.

The Journey

The children said they started by making $3 on their first day and eventually have come to mine three types of cryptocurrencies — Bitcoin, Ethereum and Ravencoin.

According to Ishaan, crypto mining was the same as gold or diamond mining, with the only difference being that the former happens without shovels. “We started because we wanted to learn something new about technology – and also make some money along the way,” Ishaan told CNBC.

Environment-friendly

According to a report in CNBC.com, the children said that they had shifted to environmentally sustainable resources for mining by using 100% renewable energy sources. Starting from a garage where they placed their computers to avoid overheating and creating noise in their home, the siblings now use their garage only to test and build the mining rigs and have moved to their office in downtown Dallas.

The children said they were self-taught in converting their Alienware computers into mining rigs from videos available on Youtube. They said their father, a former investment banker, sparked their interest in cryptocurrency and even took out a loan to help their crypto mining activities. According to the report, the children found that they could earn up to $1,000 by adding more processors and equipment, such as SHA256 capable ASC antminers, along with Nvidia RTX 3080-Ti GPUs, to their computers.

The Thakur siblings said they expected to earn $36,000 by the end of this month, and hope to earn some profits after paying for their college fees.