Cryptocurrency enthusiasts can now earn Bitcoin with just a laptop GPU

Wannabe cryptocurrency miners unwilling to shell out thousands for a specialized rig might just be in luck. A new application, Honeyminer, allows even those with modest PCs to mine popular cryptocurrencies as part of a pool. For those willing to donate GPU power for spare change, paid in bitcoin, this might be the easiest way to do it.

After quietly launching last month, Honeyminer has seen an explosion of new users, some 10,000 as of this writing.

The idea is simple: allow those without thousands to spend on custom rigs the option to join a larger pool where they can combine resources with others in an attempt to solve equations once reserved for higher-powered machines. While the average GPU is relatively modest, thousands of interconnected devices more than make up for an individual PCs hardware shortcomings.

It’s an idea that’s been done with more powerful hardware, but Honeyminer is definitely one of the first that encourages those with…