mining $110,000 in bitcoin a month

Eng Taing is in the business of making money.

He runs his own private equity firm with $250 million in assets under management (according to his website), invests in real estate, has worked in data science and analytics at Apple — and he got into bitcoin back in 2013, well before it was popular to make even a passive bet on the crypto asset class.

Now, Taing runs 261 personal mining machines generating the world’s most popular digital token.

“I just like making money,” Taing told CNBC.

“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. “I just like to look at where I can get some good arbitrage advantage, and I thought bitcoin mining presented that both from just, ‘Hey, I could get more bitcoin by having miners than buying bitcoin, especially at the scale that I can get into it — but also, that I am a big believer in bitcoin’s future.'”

Bitcoin operates on a proof-of-work mining model, meaning that miners around the world run high-powered computers to simultaneously create new bitcoin and to validate transactions. The process requires expensive equipment, some technical know-how, and a lot of electricity. Taing decided to outsource most of that work by enlisting the help of Compass Mining, 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.

So far, the experiment is working out pretty well, according to Taing. Of his 261 mining rigs, which include Canaan AvalonMiners, Bitmain Antminer S19 Pros, and Whatsminer M30Ss, 200 are hosted through Compass in Nebraska and Canada. They generate about 2.8 bitcoin a month, or about $111,000, according to digital receipts he provided CNBC.

Taing also earns income buying and selling mining hardware to retail customers on Compass’ marketplace. They typically buy one or two at a time and are not as price sensitive.

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.

“It will effectively give small miners a substantial share of bitcoin’s network hashrate, which has ultimately, always been our goal,” said Gibbs. “We want to get 5% of the network being controlled by retail miners, and then move that up to 10% to 15% in the coming years.”

Gibbs says he’s noticed a lot of people who would normally invest in real estate are instead bringing those dollars to mining, because they’re able to see a faster return on mining than they would if they were buying a rental property, especially as private equity steps in to buy houses and drive up prices.