My Nephew’s Gaming Rig Is Worth More Than My Car

My Nephew’s Gaming Rig Is Worth More Than My…

Dear Reader,

Margaret sent me over to my nephew’s place last Saturday to drop off his grandmother’s old china cabinet. “Just help him get it upstairs,” she said. “It shouldn’t take long.”

Should have known better.

I walked into his apartment and stopped dead in my tracks.

The living room looked like the bridge of the starship Enterprise. Six massive computer monitors mounted on the wall. Towers humming and blinking like slot machines in Vegas. Cables snaking everywhere. The whole place felt like it was vibrating.

“Jesus, Tommy. What is all this?”

“Oh, hey Uncle Glenn. Just my setup.” He was typing something while three different screens showed scrolling numbers I couldn’t make heads or tails of.

“Setup for what? Are you running NASA from your living room?”

He laughed. “Just some computing stuff. Where do you want the cabinet?”

We wrestled the thing upstairs to his bedroom, and when we came back down, I couldn’t help staring at all the equipment again.

“Tommy, level with me. How much did this cost?”

He shrugged. “Maybe forty grand? Little more maybe.”

I nearly choked. “Forty thousand dollars? For video games?”

“I don’t really game anymore, Uncle Glenn.”

Now I was confused. “Then what the hell do you need forty thousand dollars worth of computers for?”

That’s when he sat me down and started explaining. Slowly, like he was talking to a child. Which, let’s face it, when it comes to this stuff, I basically am.

“See, these machines are working 24/7. Half of them are mining crypto – you know, Bitcoin and some other ones. The other half are doing AI training for companies.”

“AI training?”

“Yeah, like when companies want to build chatbots or image recognition software, they need massive amounts of computer power to train the AI models. Instead of buying their own supercomputers, they rent processing power from people like me.”

I looked around the room. “And they pay you for this?”

“About six grand a month, total.”

I sat there doing the math. Seventy-two thousand a year. From his living room.

“That’s more than I made some years when I was working full time.”

“Different world now, Uncle Glenn.”

No kidding.

“But how does it work? I mean, how do they know you’re actually doing the work and not just… I don’t know, watching Netflix?”

“The blockchain handles all that. Smart contracts verify the work gets done correctly before anyone gets paid. It’s all automated.”

“Blockchain. That’s the Bitcoin thing, right?”

“Bitcoin uses blockchain, but there are tons of different networks. Some are for payments, some are for computing, some are for storage. They all use different tokens.”

My head was starting to spin. “Tokens?”

“Cryptocurrencies. But instead of just being money, they’re like… tickets to use different services. Or payments for providing those services.”

I watched his screens for a few minutes. Numbers changing constantly. Little notifications popping up.

“So right now, while we’re talking, you’re making money?”

“Yep. Probably made about twelve bucks since you got here.”

Twelve dollars in twenty minutes. Just from having computers running in his living room.

“Tommy, does this seem… I don’t know… too good to be true?”

He thought about that for a second. “Uncle Glenn, remember when you used to tell me about your first job? How you made sixty cents an hour at the gas station?”

I nodded.

“Did that seem too good to be true to your grandfather?”

Good point. My grandfather worked on a farm for room and board. The idea of getting paid sixty cents an hour to pump gas probably seemed ridiculous to him.

“But this is different,” I said. “This is just… computers talking to computers.”

“So is your bank account. So is your credit card. So is pretty much everything involving money these days.”

Another good point.

“The thing is,” Tommy continued, “all these AI companies need way more computing power than they can build themselves. Google, Microsoft, Amazon – they’ve got huge data centers, but it’s still not enough. So they’re creating these markets where regular people can sell their extra computing power.”

“And the cryptocurrency part?”

“That’s how it all works. You can’t have a global marketplace for computing power using checks and bank transfers. Too slow, too expensive, too complicated. Crypto handles all the payments instantly, anywhere in the world.”

I leaned back in his chair, trying to process all this.

“So when you bought Bitcoin, you weren’t just buying digital money. You were buying into this whole… ecosystem?”

“Exactly. Some crypto is just money. But some of it is like buying shares in the infrastructure of the internet. The stuff that makes all this new technology possible.”

We talked for another hour. He showed me how the work gets distributed, how payments flow through different networks, how quality control works. It was like getting a peek behind the curtain of the modern economy.

On the drive home, I couldn’t stop thinking about what I’d seen.

Here’s this kid – well, he’s 28, but he’s still a kid to me – making more money from his living room than most people make at full-time jobs. And he’s doing it by participating in markets that didn’t exist when I retired.

More than that, he’s helping power the AI revolution that everyone’s talking about. Those chatbots, image generators, all the AI tools people are using – some of that processing is happening on computers in apartments like Tommy’s.

It made me realize something. When I bought my first Bitcoin, I thought I was buying digital gold. Something to protect against inflation, maybe make some money if it went up.

But what if I actually bought a small piece of the infrastructure that’s going to power the next phase of the economy?

What if crypto isn’t just about money at all, but about creating new ways for people to participate in technological progress?

By the time I pulled into my driveway, I had a dozen new questions for Margaret.

And a completely different perspective on what we might have gotten ourselves into.

Stay sharp,

Glenn Short

P.S. Tommy asked if I wanted to see his monthly earnings report. Apparently last month was his best ever – over eight grand. I told him maybe next time. My brain was already full.

Hi, I’m Glenn.

I’ve been writing about money for 30 years and making it for longer than that. Built my wealth the old-fashioned way – real estate, conservative investments, and not losing my shirt chasing every new trend. But when the rules change, smart money adapts. That’s what this newsletter is about: spotting the shifts before they become obvious to everyone else. I’m not here to get rich quick or sell you dreams. I’m here to figure out what’s actually happening while most people are still fighting the last war.

Glenn Short

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© 2025 The character “Glenn Short” and associated stories, experiences, and testimonials presented in this communication are fictional, dramatized accounts created for educational and illustrative purposes. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. These dramatized narratives are not based on actual experiences or real financial outcomes. It’s Today Media LLC, its managers, its employees, and assigns (collectively “The Company”) do not make any guarantee or warranty about what is advertised above. The Company is not affiliated with, nor does it receive compensation from, any specific security. The Company is not registered or licensed by any governing body in any jurisdiction to give investing advice or provide investment recommendation. Nothing in this e-mail should be considered personalized financial advice. Any investments recommended in this letter should be made only after consulting with your investment advisor and only after reviewing the prospectus or financial statements of the company.

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