Sadly, going down pit with axe in hand will not net you any Bitcoin. What’s required is serious processing power. While enhanced ASIC technology will shortly be available to the general public, reducing the need for quite such a large roomful of processors, the energy required to run a mining operation will remain considerable, if not vast by comparison to the average household bill.
Alongside the Bitcoin ‘gold rush’, another race is heating up: to find the cheapest source of electricity to power it.