The easy answer is "Please don't do this." Period. Have an electrician to do it for you. The profession is regulated for a reason .. and if I were you .. I'd rather sleep at night.
To put it mildly, it's less firefighter effort this way.
True in general. I left it open for the very few cases where it might be safe to do so, like if you wired in a dedicated 120V 20A circuit for your miners and now want to change it to be 240V (marking the white with tape at each end to stay in code, of course). Changing an existing circuit that you didn't install yourself and isn't dedicated would be a terrible idea though.
As for electrical changes in general, depends on your jurisdiction. Here a homeowner can do their own wiring; you just need to pull a permit and have the electrical inspector come out and take a look.
Not that he'd ever pass anything like what is being suggested here of course. I do all my own wiring, and other than needing an electrician once to hook up an unfused new service to the meter I've never had to call one out.