Bitcoin Mining Power Fundamentals Explained

If you're mining Bitcoin, you do not need to figure the total value of that 64-digit number (the hash). I repeat: You do not need to figure the entire value of a hash.

Bear in Mind that ELI5 analogy, in which I wrote the number 19 on a piece of paper and put it in a sealed envelope

In Bitcoin mining terms, that metaphorical undisclosed number in the envelope is called the objective hash.

What miners are doing with these tremendous computers and dozens of cooling fans is guessing in the hash. Miners create these guesses by randomly generating as many"nonces" as you can, as fast as possible. A nonce is short for"number only used once," and the nonce is the secret to generating these 64-bit hexadecimal numbers I keep talking about.

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The first miner whose nonce generates a hash that is less than or equivalent to the target hash is given credit for completing that block, and is awarded the spoils of 12.5 BTC. .

In theory you could achieve the Exact Same aim by rolling a 16-sided die 64 days to Reach random numbers, but why on earth would you want to do this

The screenshot below, taken from the website Blockchain.info, might help you put all of this information together in a glance. You are looking at a summary of everything that happened when block 490163 was mined. The nonce that generated the "winning" hash was 731511405. The target hash is shown on the top.

As you see here, their contribution into the Bitcoin community is that they confirmed 1768 transactions for this block. If you truly want to see all 1768 of those transactions for this block, go to this page and scroll down to the heading"Transactions." .

There is no minimum goal, but there's a maximum goal set by the Bitcoin Protocol. No target can be greater than this number:

Here are some examples of randomized hashes and the criteria for if they will lead to achievement for your miner:

You'd need to get a speedy mining rig or, more realistically, join a mining pool--a bunch of miners that combine their computing power and split the mined bitcoin. Mining pools are similar to those Powerball clubs whose members purchase lottery tickets en masse and consent to share any winnings. A disproportionately large number of blocks are mined by pools rather than by individual miners. .

In other words, it is literally just a numbers game.  You cannot guess the pattern or make a prediction based on preceding goal hashes. The difficulty level of the most recent block at the time of writing is 2,874,674,234,416, i.e. the chance of any given nonce producing a hash below the target is just 1 in 2,874,674,234,416--significantly less than 1 in 2 trillion. .

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The aforementioned website Cryptocompare delivers a very helpful calculator that allows you to plug in check out this site numbers like your hash rate, electricity costs etc., to gauge the costs and benefits.

Mining benefits are paid into the miner who finds a solution to the puzzle first, and the likelihood that a participant is going to be the one to find the solution is equal to the portion of the entire mining power on the network.  Participants which have a small percentage of the mining capability stand a very small chance of discovering the next block on their own.  For instance, a mining card that one could purchase for a couple thousand dollars would represent less than 0.001percent of their network's mining power.  With such a tiny chance at finding the next block, it might be a long time before that miner finds out a block, and the problem going up makes things even worse.  The miner may never recover their investment.  The answer to this predicament is mining pools.  Mining pools are operated by third parties and coordinate groups of miners.  By working together in a swimming pool and sharing the payouts amongst participants, miners can find a steady stream of bitcoin starting the day that they trigger their miner.  Statistics on a few of the mining pools can be seen on Blockchain.info. .

Sure. As mentioned, the simplest way to get Bitcoin is to purchase it on an exchange such as Coinbase.com. Alternately, you can consistently leverage the"pickaxe strategy". This relies on the old saw that during the 1848 California gold rush, the smart investment was not to pan for gold, but rather to make the pickaxes taken for mining.

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In a crypto context, the pickaxe equivalent are a company that manufactures equpiment used for Bitcoin mining. You can look into companies which make ASICs miners or GPU miners. .