YouTuber Uses Commodore 64 For Bitcoin Mining

A YouTube user named 8-Bit Show And Tell has used his Commodore 64 to mine Bitcoin. The modder uses the open-source C64 Bitcoin Miner software, which is published by GitHub user YTM/Elysium.

YTM/Elysium recently published the C64 Bitcoin Miner on GitHub. The user has also released a modified version of the ntgbtminer there that works on the Commodore 64, which is based on the Game Boy build of Stacksmashing. This allows users to try to solve actual Bitcoin blocks on their Commodore 64. The software was tested this week by YouTube user 8-Bit Show And Tell, in which he discusses the performance of the console from 1982, among other things.

The Commodore 64 features a MOS Technology 6510 processor, which runs at a clock speed of approximately 1.02MHz. The console also has 64KB of RAM and a 20KB ROM. This hardware is good for a hash rate of about 0.3 hashes per second. To illustrate, current ASICs, which are specifically designed for Bitcoin mining, reach 100 terahashes per second. Even the Nintendo Game Boy has a hashrate of 0.8h/s.

However, YouTube user 8-Bit Show And Tell reports that the code for C64 Bitcoin Miner is written in C. The Commodore 64 could perform up to ten times better if the mining software were written in native machine language for the C64. The Commodore 64 can also be upgraded with a SuperCPU accelerator, which runs at a clock speed of 20MHz. This add-in is said to boost mining performance up to twenty times.