Anvil Brand, a farrier and blacksmith supplier in Lexington, Ill., is preparing to accept a new form of payment for goods and services: cryptocurrency.

According to Steve Hoselton, co-owner of Anvil Brand, the company began the process of accepting and earning bitcoin, Ether, Litecoin and Ripple, four types of the new digital money, earlier this year.

“By being involved in the transactions, setting up our accounts and watching how those accounts move, we can watch and learn every step of the process,” Hoselton explains. “That’s why we’ve done the mining first.”

Mining for bitcoins — or for other kinds of digital currency — means using computers to solve mathematical problems that help validate online transactions in cryptocurrency. Mining operations all over the world compete to solve math problems as part of the transaction validation process. Whichever computer solves a given equation the fastest earns digital currency as a reward.

By setting up a mining operation, Anvil Brand has already begun earning cryptocurrencies. If you visit Anvil Brand’s headquarters in Lexington and ask to see the mining operation, you’ll see a room full of…