Cryptocurrency mining with Siberian babushkas

A residential block of red bricks stretches unambitiously under the freezing sky of Irkutsk, Siberia. Inside, a series of small bitcoin mining machines are running on cheap electricity, as grandmother Valeriya’s family of domestic miners, a bullish bunch, stack up a potential fortune for the future.

The granny, only identified as Valeriya, has never looked back since receiving a mining rig from her son, Yuri, as a present. “When [BTC] will be worth a million [dollars], then I will leave a very large inheritance to my grandchildren,” Valeriya told the BBC in a recent interview.