As any student of local history knows, it wasn't the miners who made off like bandits during the Gold Rush -- it was the savvy merchants selling the miners picks and shovels.
Silicon Valley is no fool, and with Bitcoin soaring to record value -- over $700 on Monday, but down to under $600 on Wednesday -- a new generation of merchants is lining up to sell would-be Bitcoin millionaires digital mining tools, according to reports.
Bitcoins are mined by setting up servers that solve mathematical problems, which become more and more complex with more people using -- and mining -- Bitcoins. That takes a lot of computing power -- and here come the power brokers.
Entrepreneurs like data expert Balaji Srinivasan -- the same man who suggested Silicon Valley might do well to secede from the United States -- has a firm named 21E6 which is working to develop chips designed to mine Bitcoins, the Silicon Valley Business Journal reported.
And HashFast, another firm, is making chips with the computing power of "70,000 Intel chips" -- for the price of $11,700.
Multiple firms have caught wind of the mint to be made from Bitcoin miners, and companies in Ukraine, Sweden and Texas are all getting in the game, the Business Journal reported.
Bitcoin Soaring, Silicon Valley Aims to Sell “Tools” to “Miners”
Bitcoin's value is soaring, and so is speculation around how to make a mint.
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