From watching Netflix to pounding out miles on your exercise bike, there are many ways to pass the time in hotel quarantine.
Few of them, however, are as potentially profitable
as the hobby one Perth based man has recently taken up, upon his return to Australia from a trip overseas.
Stuck in hotel quarantine for two weeks with nothing to do, and free electricity, travel blogger and airline points hacker Immanuel Debeer decided to try his hand at mining bitcoin.
Watch him mining for bitcoin the video below
Immanuel shared the video on his Instagram story a few days ago. He then confirmed to DMARGE that it’s not a joke and “I’m really mining bitcoin.”
“Anyone with a good graphics card can do it.”
He also told us it could prove a good way to offset his quarantine costs (if he finds any bitcoin). Australian hotel quarantine costs about $3,000.
“Since power is free, it’s 100% profitable.”
As for whether the hotel was aware of his bitcoin mining activity, Immanuel said: “I don’t think they know? At least I haven’t told them.”
“This will help me offset the cost of the quarantine haha!”
Other than that Immanuel told DMARGE that quarantining in West Australia has actually been “a very smooth/easy process” especially when compared to horror stories he’s read over the last year.
He also said, “Coming back into Australia, although the people are friendly, you feel like a prison/criminal.”
“There’s a guard outside my hotel door and from the time we landed until we got checked in there was a police escort to make sure nobody had a chance to run off.”
Aside from that, he told us life in quarantine is a bit dull but – so far – not too bad.
“I’m used to working from home so this is not all too different and when I’m not working and mining Bitcoin I use my gaming PC to play COD Warzone.”
“That said, I wouldn’t want to do quarantine with partner/family or kids (not that i have kids!) etc. The hotel rooms are tiny so there really isn’t much room for more than 1. Anyway, it’s only day 4 and I’ve had people tell me the breaking point is usually day 10…”