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If you are mining Bitcoin, you do not need to figure the entire 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, 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 known as the objective 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 you can, as fast 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.

About Coin Mining Hardware

The primary 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 days to arrive at random numbers, but why on earth do you want to do this

The screenshot below, taken from the site Blockchain.info, might enable you to 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 goal 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 truly want to see all 1768 of those transactions for this block, go to this webpage and scroll down to the heading"Transactions." .

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

Here are some examples of randomized hashes and the criteria for if they will lead to achievement for your miner:

You'd have to get a speedy mining rig , more realistically, join a mining pool--a bunch of miners who combine their computing ability and split the mined bitcoin. Mining pools are similar to those Powerball clubs whose members purchase lottery tickets en masse and consent to share any winnings. A disproportionately high number of blocks are mined by pools rather than by individual miners. .

In other words, it is literally only a numbers game.  You cannot guess the pattern or make 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 below the goal is 1 in 2,874,674,234,416--significantly less than 1 in 2 trillion. .

What Does Bitcoin Mining Efficiency Mean?

The aforementioned website Cryptocompare offers a very helpful calculator which permits you to plug in numbers like your hash speed, electricity costs etc., to gauge the costs and benefits.

Mining rewards are paid to the miner who finds a solution to the puzzle , and the likelihood that a participant is going to 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 tiny chance of discovering the next block on their own.  For instance, a mining card that one could buy for a few thousand bucks would represent less than 0.001% of their network's mining energy.  With such a small chance at finding the next block, it might 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 pools.  Mining pools are run by third parties and coordinate groups of miners.  company website By working together in a pool and sharing the payouts amongst participants, miners can get a steady stream of bitcoin starting the afternoon that they trigger their miner.  Statistics on some of the mining pools can be seen on Blockchain.info. .

Sure. As discussed, the simplest way to acquire Bitcoin is to purchase 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 goldbut rather to make 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 start looking into companies that make ASICs miners or GPU miners. .