I'm curious how common are electronics hobbyists around here. I'm under the impression that nowadays it's mostly software engineers who dominate cryptocurrency, but they have at least some electronics knowledge for building GPU mining setups.
I personally began electronics very early, in first grade, when my dad took me to work and after noting how interested I was in what he did, gave me an electronics kit to play with. Now, about 20 years later, DIY electronics is my main hobby.
My most recent addition to my electronics lab is a high voltage isolated probe (the box that says EEVblog on it, first item I bought with Bitcoin!) for safely viewing mains circuits on an oscilloscope. One of my areas of specialization is power electronics, of which efficiency optimization is a particularly interesting and fun topic that is directly relevant to cryptocurrency mining.
The test setup above is intended to test how well the isolated probe picks up high frequency signals near its 70MHz limit (it does so very well) and I then realized it very well illustrated a statement I read in a book a long time ago. "While it probably wouldn't be very entertaining to watch TV on an oscilloscope, the same information is there!"
