Bitcoin Mining Power for Dummies

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

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

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

What miners are doing with those tremendous computers and dozens of cooling fans is guessing at the hash. Miners make 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 which is less than or equal to the target hash is given credit for completing that obstruct, and is awarded the spoils of 12.5 BTC. .

In theory you can achieve the Exact Same goal by rolling a 16-sided expire 64 times to Reach random numbers, but why on earth would you want to do this

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

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

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

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

You'd have to find a fast mining rig , more realistically, join a mining pool--a bunch of miners that combine their computing ability and divide the mined bitcoin. Mining pools are somewhat similar to those Powerball clubs whose members buy lottery tickets en masse and consent to share any winnings. A disproportionately high number of cubes are mined by pools rather than by individual miners. .

In other words, it's literally only 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 1 in 2,874,674,234,416--significantly less than 1 in 2 trillion. .

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The aforementioned website Cryptocompare offers a go to my site helpful calculator which permits you to plug in numbers such as your hash speed, power prices etc. to gauge the costs and benefits.

Mining rewards are paid to the miner who finds a solution to the puzzle , and the probability that a participant is going to be the one to find the solution is equivalent to the portion of the total mining energy on the network.  Participants which have a small percentage of their 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 few thousand bucks would represent less than 0.001percent of the network's mining power.  With such a small chance at finding the next block, it could be a long time before that miner finds a block, and also the difficulty going up makes things even worse.  The miner may never recoup 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 flow of bitcoin starting the day they trigger their miner.  Statistics on some of the mining pools can be seen on Blockchain.info. Learn More .

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

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