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If you are mining Bitcoin, you do not need to calculate the entire value of that 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 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 huge computers and dozens of cooling fans is guessing in the target hash. Miners make 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.

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The primary miner whose nonce generates a hash which is less than or equal to the target hash is awarded credit for completing that obstruct, and is given the spoils of 12.5 BTC. .

In theory you could Attain the same aim by rolling a 16-sided expire 64 times to arrive at random numbers, but why on earth would you want to do that

The screenshot below, taken by the website Blockchain.info, might enable you to put all this information together at a glance. You are looking at a list of everything which happened when obstruct #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 into the Bitcoin community is that they confirmed 1768 transactions for this cube. If you truly want to see all 1768 of these transactions for this block, go to this page and scroll down to the heading"Transactions." .

There is no minimum goal, 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 the criteria for if they will lead to achievement for your miner:

You'd need to get a speedy mining rig , more realistically, join a mining pool--a group of miners who combine their computing power and divide the mined bitcoin. Mining pools are comparable to people Powerball clubs whose members purchase lottery tickets en masse and consent 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 just 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 additional info is 2,874,674,234,416, i.e. the chance of any given nonce producing a hash beneath the target is just 1 in 2,874,674,234,416--less than 1 in 2 trillion. .

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

Mining rewards are paid into the miner who discovers a solution to the puzzle first, and also the likelihood that a participant is going to be the one to find the solution is equal to the portion of the entire 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 purchase to get a couple thousand dollars would represent less than 0.001percent of their network's mining power.  With such a small chance at finding the next block, it could be a long time before that miner finds out 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.  By working together in a pool and sharing the payouts amongst participants, miners can get a steady flow of bitcoin starting the day that they trigger their miner.  Statistics on some 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 such as Coinbase.com. Alternately, you can consistently leverage the"pickaxe strategy". 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 make 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 look into companies that make ASICs miners or GPU miners. .