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If you're mining Bitcoin, you do not need to figure the total value of the 64-digit number (the hash). I repeat: You do not need to calculate 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 those tremendous computers and dozens of cooling fans is guessing at the hash. Miners create these guesses by randomly generating as many"nonces" as possible, as fast as possible. A nonce is short for"number only used once," and also the nonce is the secret to generating these 64-bit hexadecimal numbers I keep talking about.

All about Ig Bonds

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 achieve the same aim by rolling a 16-sided expire 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 help you put all of this information together in a glance. You are looking at a summary 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 find all 1768 of these transactions for this block, go to this webpage and scroll down to the heading"Transactions." .

There is no minimum target, 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 the criteria for if they will lead to official site achievement for the miner:

You would need to get a fast mining rig , more realistically, join a mining pool--a group of miners that combine their computing power and split the mined bitcoin. Mining pools are somewhat similar to those Powerball clubs whose members purchase lottery tickets en masse and agree 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 imagine the pattern or make a prediction based on previous target 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. .

All about Coin Mining Hardware

The aforementioned site Cryptocompare offers a helpful calculator that permits you to plug in numbers like your hash rate, electricity prices etc. to gauge the costs and benefits.

Mining benefits are paid into the miner who finds a solution to the puzzle first, and also the probability that a participant will be the one to discover the solution is equivalent to the portion of the total mining power 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 buy to get a few thousand bucks would represent less than 0.001percent of their network's mining energy.  With such a tiny chance at finding the next block, it might be a long time before that miner finds a block, and 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 the original source amongst participants, miners can get a steady stream of bitcoin starting the day they activate their miner.  Statistics on a few of the mining pools can be seen on Blockchain.info. .

Sure. As discussed, the easiest way to acquire Bitcoin is to buy it on an exchange like Coinbase.com. Alternately, you can always leverage the"pickaxe plan". This relies on the old saw that during the 1848 California gold rush, the wise investment was not to pan for gold, but rather to create the pickaxes used for mining.

Coin Mining Hardware - An Overview

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