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If you are 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 entire 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 terms, that metaphorical undisclosed number in the envelope is called the target hash.

What miners are doing with those 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 quickly 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.

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The primary miner whose nonce generates a hash which 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 can Attain the Exact Same goal by rolling a 16-sided die 64 times to Reach random numbers, but why on earth do you want to do that

The screenshot below, taken from the site Blockchain.info, might enable you to put all of this information together at 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 really want to find all 1768 of these transactions for this block, go to this page and scroll down to the heading"Transactions." .

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

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

You'd have to get a speedy mining rig , more realistically, join a mining pool--a group 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 agree to discuss any winnings. A disproportionately high number of cubes 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 click to investigate a prediction based on preceding 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 beneath the goal is 1 in 2,874,674,234,416--less than 1 in two trillion. .

9 Easy Facts About Bitcoin Mining Efficiency Described

The aforementioned site Cryptocompare delivers a very helpful calculator that allows you to plug in numbers such as your hash rate, power costs etc. to estimate the costs and benefits.

Mining benefits are paid to the miner who discovers 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 entire mining power on the network.  Participants with a small percentage of the 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 couple 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 out 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 run 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 afternoon they activate 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 buy it on an exchange like Coinbase.com. Alternately, you can always 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 used for mining.

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