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If you are mining Bitcoin, you do not need to calculate the entire 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, 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 called the target hash.

What miners are doing with those tremendous computers and dozens of cooling fans is guessing in the target hash. Miners create 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 primary miner whose nonce generates a hash which is less than or equivalent to the target hash is awarded 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 die 64 times to arrive at random numbers, but why on earth do you want to do that

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

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

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

You would need to get a speedy mining rig , more realistically, join a mining pool--a bunch of miners that combine view it their computing power and divide the mined bitcoin. Mining pools are similar to people Powerball clubs whose members buy lottery tickets en masse and consent to discuss any winnings. A disproportionately high number of cubes are mined by pools rather than by individual miners. .

In other words, it is literally just 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 beneath the target is 1 in 2,874,674,234,416--less than 1 in 2 trillion. .

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The aforementioned website Cryptocompare delivers a very helpful calculator that permits you to plug in numbers like your hash rate, electricity prices etc., to estimate the costs and benefits.

Mining rewards are paid into the miner who finds a solution to the puzzle first, and also the likelihood 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 tiny chance of discovering the next block on their own.  For instance, a mining card that one could buy for a couple thousand bucks would represent less than 0.001% of their network's mining energy.  With such a tiny chance at finding the next block, it could be a long time before that miner finds a block, and also the problem going up makes things even worse.  The miner may never recoup their investment.  The answer to this predicament is mining see this 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 stream of bitcoin starting the afternoon that they activate their miner.  Statistics on a few of the mining pools can be seen on Blockchain.info. .

Sure. As discussed, the simplest way to get Bitcoin is to buy it on an exchange like 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 wise 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 used for Bitcoin mining. You can look into companies which make ASICs miners or GPU miners. .