Being a Cardano operator can be a real business

We can see that many people from the community are interested in being a Cardano staking pool operator (SPO). It is very positive for the ecosystem. People should be aware of the fact that being SPO can be a serious business one day.

The cryptocurrency environment has changed in the past years

In the beginning, Bitcoin miners were people that heard about the possibility to earn magic coins by running their computers overnight and mining them. It was often crypto-punk enthusiasts that started doing that. Later, other people joined the mining industry and wanted to earn digital coins. It was appealing to keep running a decentralized network that was created by an anonymous person(s) Satoshi Nakamoto in order to give the world independent money. Money that would not be controlled by a central authority. Instead of the central issuer that would control the money supply, the network was designed to gradually release new coins in a predefined curve. The price of bitcoins was zero in the very beginning. Bitcoin was launched in January 2009 and the first real-world transaction happened in 2010 when a bitcoin miner bought two pizzas from Papa John’s in Florida for 10,000 bitcoins. It was a barter trade. After some time, it was possible to price bitcoins in fiat currencies. In 2010 the first exchanges appeared and the price of bitcoins rallied from 0.008 USD per BTC to 0.08 USD per coin within 10 days. You probably know the current price.

Nobody could anticipate the future of Bitcoin at those times and it is probably true nowadays as well. You could ask what has Cardano in common with the history of Bitcoin. Both Cardano and Bitcoin are public and open networks. It means that everybody can join and participate in running it. The Bitcoin history is longer so we can have a look at it and learn from it. What is especially interesting for us is the development of mining over time. Satoshi has designed Bitcoin in a way that every holder could also be a miner. If you downloaded a full node then you could begin mining on your computer with a high probability that you mine a block and get a reward. It can be said that every holder of bitcoins could participate in running the network.

Not many people were interested in mining bitcoins at those times. As the number of people slowly rose…