# Happy Birthday
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![7BAD8102-3CD5-4450-9BA3-7FB8A552C589.jpeg](https://images.hive.blog/DQmaYpk8gxbLz7a1AWKyPn7hMNKePnchAVARYFhvspMdEC3/7BAD8102-3CD5-4450-9BA3-7FB8A552C589.jpeg)
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### Yep, count those cakes, 1,2,3,4 & 5
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![4208F2CD-7A7E-422F-8D40-C2662937856B.jpeg](https://images.hive.blog/DQmb5U8VTEBh6prKhjSrdj3DSLcuuco23ngMuMD27479Lr7/4208F2CD-7A7E-422F-8D40-C2662937856B.jpeg)
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### I am close to being a Hive O.G.
- I have written over 3000 posts
- I have made over 22,000 comments.. Engage Much? Yes, quite a bit
- I have learned a ton, earned a ton, invested a ton, lost a ton, but nothing you do for your mind is ever wasted.
- But this post is more an introduction.
- I have been educated here
### What have I learned?
- I learned how to build a cryptocurrency miner
- I started by building 3 GPU mining rigs or more precisely purpose built computers
- A mining rig is a motherboard, 1-12 GPUs, 1 CPU, one ram memory and a power source, plus Ethernet connection .
- It is amazing complex, yet simple.
- I build probably six or seven, the largest two had six GPU Nividia ones and I watched YouTube videos to learn how to do everything.
- Then I watched a friend build one, helped a friend build one, then my friend helped me build mine. I learned so much crazy stuff doing it, and although I made amazing money, the most valuable thing I learned was that I could do anything, if I focused and was ready to learn.
- Those miners took hours to assemble, and I mined during the bull and bear market my first year.
- It was scary, exciting and rewarding.
- I moved on into staking pools, where I pooled my crypto with that of others to gain numerical advantage size of holdings brought, and from there Masternodes, specialized miners requiring large crypto holdings to provide network stability and liquidity.
- Sometime after that I discovered delegated proof of stake and Hive.
- This time it felt different, and I dove into the rabbit hole of Hive, staked Hive called HivePower, the reward pool, voting power, author rewards, curation rewards, and delegation. 
- The rabbit hole was deep, and each quarter it gets deeper.
- Hive is a never ending self digging rabbit hole, and it is difficult to keep up.
- Then a developer created Hive-engine, and sudden Hive Engine Communities were a thing.
- I invested in so many interesting communities like Leofinance, Sports, Photo, and more. 
- I spent a fair amount of Hive joining communities and buying, then staking their tokens.
- One community Leofinance, stood out, as a good place to write about my journey, and help others learn about crypto.
- I thought I was pretty knowledgeable back then, after all, I was literally building computers for a hobby and earning Magic Internet Money. But boy was I wrong. There is so much to learn here, that it still blows my mind !
- There is an amazing amount of knowledge here. And you don’t just learn about crypto, you gain an amazing understanding of the traditional finance system, along with a better understanding of its strengths and weaknesses.
- This -lace is like a fountain of knowledge; stocks, bonds, stock brokers, banks, stock options, real estate and much, much more.
- Like any place, the authors are good, bad and ugly, plus some in between.
- Some articles make you smarter, others make you dumber, while others just make you smile.
- You have to sort the wheat from the weeds to make good bread. This place is no different.
-  My last words, said in my best Yoda Voice: Learn you will, and profit you can, but you must not try, you must do.