Rumored Buzz on Bitcoin Mining Efficiency

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

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

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

What miners are doing with those tremendous computers and dozens of cooling fans is guessing at the target hash. Miners make these guesses by randomly generating as many"nonces" as you can, as quickly as possible. A nonce is short for"number only used once," and 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 equivalent to the target hash is given credit for completing that obstruct, and is given the spoils of 12.5 BTC. .

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

The screenshot below, taken by the website Blockchain.info, might help you put all of this information together in a glance. You're 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 to the Bitcoin community is they confirmed 1768 transactions for this block. If you truly want to find all 1768 of these transactions for this block, then go to this webpage and scroll down to the heading"Transactions." .

There is no minimum target, 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 achievement for your miner:

You'd need to find a fast mining rig or, more realistically, join a mining pool--a bunch of miners that combine their computing ability and divide the mined bitcoin. Mining pools are somewhat comparable to people Powerball clubs whose members purchase lottery tickets en masse and agree to share any winnings. A disproportionately large number of blocks are mined by pools rather than by individual miners. .

In other words, it's literally just a numbers game.  You cannot guess the pattern or make a prediction based on previous 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 goal is just 1 in 2,874,674,234,416--significantly less than 1 in two trillion. .

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The aforementioned website Cryptocompare offers a very helpful calculator that allows you to plug in numbers such as your hash rate, power prices etc. to gauge the costs and benefits.

Mining rewards are paid to the miner who discovers a my site solution to the puzzle , and the probability that a participant will be the one to find the solution is equivalent to the portion of the entire mining energy on the network.  Participants which have a small percentage of their mining power stand a very small chance of discovering the next block on their own.  For instance, a mining card that one could purchase for a few thousand bucks would represent less than 0.001% of the network's mining energy.  With such a tiny chance at finding the next block, it could be a long time before that miner finds out a block, and 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 run by third parties and coordinate groups of miners.  By working together in a pool and sharing the payouts amongst participants, miners can find a steady stream of bitcoin starting the day that they activate their miner.  Statistics on some of the mining pools can be seen on Blockchain.info. .

Sure. As mentioned, the simplest way to get Bitcoin is to buy it on an exchange such as Coinbase.com. Alternately, you can always 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 gold, but see instead to create 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 can start looking into companies visit which make ASICs miners or GPU miners. .