Bitcoin Mining Power for Dummies

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

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

In Bitcoin mining terms, that metaphorical undisclosed number in the envelope is known as the target hash.

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

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

In theory you could Attain the same goal by rolling a 16-sided die 64 days to Reach random numbers, but why on earth would you want to do that

The screenshot below, taken from the website Blockchain.info, might enable you to put all of this information together in a glance. You are looking at a list of everything which 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 to the Bitcoin community is that they confirmed 1768 transactions for this cube. If you really want to see all 1768 of these 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 higher than this number:

Here are some examples of randomized hashes and also the standards for whether they will lead to success for the miner:

You would need to find a fast mining rig , more realistically, join a mining pool--a group of miners that combine their computing ability and split the mined bitcoin. Mining pools are somewhat comparable to people Powerball clubs whose members buy lottery tickets en masse and agree to discuss any winnings. A disproportionately high number of like it cubes are mined by pools rather than by individual miners. .

In other words, it's literally only a numbers game.  You cannot imagine 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 1 in 2,874,674,234,416--significantly less than 1 in two trillion. .

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The aforementioned site Cryptocompare delivers a very helpful calculator which allows you to plug in numbers like your hash speed, electricity costs etc., to gauge the costs and benefits.

Mining rewards are paid into the miner who finds a solution to the puzzle , and the probability that a participant will be the one to discover the solution is equal to the portion of the total mining power on the network.  Participants which have a small percentage of the mining power stand a tiny chance of discovering the next block on their own.  For instance, a mining card that one could buy to get a couple thousand dollars would represent less than 0.001% of the network's mining power.  With such a tiny chance at finding the next block, it might be a long time before that miner finds a block, and also the difficulty 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 Related Site coordinate groups of miners.  By working together in a swimming pool and sharing the payouts amongst participants, miners can get 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 discussed, the simplest way to acquire Bitcoin is to buy it on an exchange like Coinbase.com. Alternately, you can consistently leverage the"pickaxe plan". This is based on the old saw that during the 1848 California gold rush, the smart investment was not to pan for goldbut instead to create the pickaxes used for mining.

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