In addition to being a trader, I’ve always been a tech guy, a screwdriver guy who likes to get up to his elbows in computers. It’s how I built a financial technology company that I sold to a major Wall Street brokerage for $20 million.

And, of course, it’s how I got into crypto.

Back in 2013, my son asked me if I’d “heard of this thing ”Bitcoin.”(BTC) My boy gave me the quick lowdown. The upshot was that it was this totally decentralized currency the Fed couldn’t mess with, with a finite supply, completely secure and fully transparent, with incredible “blockbuster” potential.

Of course all of that’s come to pass – to the tune of around 32,000% gains.

But the thing that really hooked me was that you could “mine” Bitcoin.

That’s what had me on eBay in about two seconds flat, looking hard for the best “rig,” of linked processors, that could crunch the insanely complex mathematical equations needed to unlock “hashes,” or small, related, verifiable fractions, of one Bitcoin.

It takes huge amounts of computing power to get a hash, let alone enough for a full bitcoin. Not only that, but the calculations become even tougher the more you mine.

Nowadays it’s pretty much impossible for individuals to mine Bitcoin – and no one person’s going to get rich trying – but back in 2013 it was more than worth the effort.

Anyhow, when my rig, one of the then-top of the line ASIC machines, arrived, I got right down to business.

It was the start of the craziest, most profitable journey I’ve ever taken – and I’m still on it, in fact. Here’s why…

It Wasn’t Easy at First… And It Wasn’t Easy Later

My trip down the river to the ocean of crypto profits wasn’t exactly smooth sailing…

The rig was the size of a decent refrigerator, but it was anything but cold. See, that much computing power generates a lot of heat; if you don’t want your rig to go up in smoke, it’s imperative that you keep it cool, and for that you need to move air – lots of air – across the CPUs constantly.

That means fans – and plenty of ’em. Before too long, my “mining” room upstairs in our house in Florida sounded like someone was driving a John Deere up and down the center aisle of Iron Maiden’s jumbo jet on takeoff.

It was loud. And the heat was still ferocious. Did I mention I live in Florida?

My crypto adventure played out during one of those “South Florida winters.” They’re not cold at all; they’re kind of warm, but not really all that hot. 70-degree days aren’t uncommon here in the winter.

Well, despite the cool season, the room with my mining rig (running flat-out) was almost always hotter than 100 degrees Fahrenheit.

My wife was having none of it. I tried to tell her my mine would make us a fortune someday, but she got fed up with the heat and noise in a hurry and “evicted” my ASIC machine, banishing my entire operation to the garage.

The garage wasn’t great, either. That’s because, just like another appliance, you have to plug the ASIC Bitcoin mining rigs into a wall outlet. My rig and cooling fans had a thirst for power that my garage with its “puny” 15-amp outlets just couldn’t handle.

I called an electrician pronto. He came in and wired up some beefy 20-amp outlets – the kind that run washers and dryers… at the same time.

That solved the immediate problem, but imagine if you ran your washer and dryer more or less 24/7… You get on the power company’s radar pretty quickly.

In fact, some miners I’ve talked to said that at the time, they actually lost money when they compared their crypto positions to their utility bills. Of course, that doesn’t really happen much anymore; Bitcoin, for all its ups and downs, is above $20,000, which easily swamps any electric bill.

I eventually had to get rid of my garage mining rig… but not before I mined several Bitcoins for myself – I kept those.

It was hot… it was noisy… my wife hated it… it was ridiculously expensive…

But I loved it because I was having fun, and by then I could clearly see the moneymaking potential in Bitcoin and crypto at large.

What You Can Still Do About Bitcoin

I still can. In fact, nearly 10 years after I mined my first Bitcoin, I think we’re just scratching the surface of the profits here – and I say that as a guy with $69,000 Bitcoin in the rearview mirror.

All of the headaches I endured getting started, all the volatility we’ve got under our belts, all of it will have been more than worth the trouble, especially in light of what I think is coming just around the corner.

The big takeaway I want to get across here is… patience. The whole time my spare room and garage were heating up, I was patient. I stuck with it. I stuck with it after that first eyeball-popping Florida Power & Light bill. And I stuck with on the entire bumpy road from $5 to $69,000 and back to $20,000. And I’ll stick with it as we punch past $100,000 at some point, too. Patience worked for me in my mining career, and it’s worked for me over the entire course of my crypto investing. It’ll work for you, too.