For Mutai, internet-based currencies are revolutionary. They open up a world of finance that might not have been accessible for a self-taught tech-obsessed kid from Kenya with no college degree.
It's also a nefarious world of online hucksters and frauds. And that's the chance Mutai takes. Is the gamble worth it?
Essentially, a cryptocurrency is an encrypted digital coin. Transactions made with these digital coins are added to a growing database known as a blockchain -- and that's where the miners come in.
"The way I understand what mining cryptocurrencies is, is that it's basically supporting the network and helping the verification and adding of transactions to the whole blockchain database," Mutai says.
"There's something known as a Hashrate, which is basically how fast can you verify transactions, and eventually help the transactions to be added to the block.
"The more powerful your computer, the more transactions you can verify, the more money you can make. Then for every transaction verification, you get something called a share, which is translated into the cryptocurrency that you're mining," Mutai tells CNN.
It can be a lucrative business. Cryptocurrencies have soared in the last year. At the start of 2017, Bitcoin was worth $966. Now it's smashed the $18,000 mark.
Mutai says he makes about $800 each month. Once the mining machine is up and running, aside from the regular power-cuts, he can kick back and let the computer do the work.
However, the huge amounts of electricity needed to run the sort of powerful computers capable of mining can be a hindrance.
Life for Mutai hasn't always been plain sailing. When he was a teenager he lost both his twin brother and his grandmother around the same time. His mother spiralled into depression and they moved 600km away from Nairobi.
They were tumultuous times. Mutai borrowed his friend's Nokia Symbian S40 mobile phone and taught himself to code on it. Eventually, he moved back to the city to pursue technology further and in 2016 was named Kenya's top developer by Git Awards.
Tech entrepreneur John Karanja founded BitHub in 2015 and runs workshops on blockchain technologies for young developers. They also do training across five African countries.
Digital coins are also attractive for those living in countries with dysfunctional currencies. In Zimbabwe the price of Bitcoin soared to become the most expensive exchange rate worldwide, on the Harare-based trading platform Golix.
Jamie Dimon, Chief executive officer of bank JP Morgan, says Bitcoin is a "fraud" and that "you can't have a business where people can invent a currency out of thin air."
There also concerns about the security of cryptocurrencies. Last year $65m worth of Bitcoin was stolen from Bitfinex, a Hong Kong-based exchange, resulting in a 20% plunge of its value.
Cryptocurrencies could be revolutionary or a swindle. But for now, with Bitcoin worth more than gold, there's a new different kind of -- digital -- miner chasing the treasure.