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If you're mining Bitcoin, you do not need to calculate 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, where I composed the number 19 on a piece of paper 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 huge computers and dozens of cooling fans is guessing in the 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 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 equal to the target hash is awarded 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 arrive at random numbers, but why on earth would you want to do that

The screenshot below, taken by the site Blockchain.info, might help you put all this information together at a glance. You're looking at a list of everything which happened when obstruct 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 into the Bitcoin community is they confirmed 1768 transactions for this cube. If you really want to see all 1768 of those transactions for this block, then go to this webpage and scroll down to the heading"Transactions." .

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

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

You'd need to get a fast mining rig , more realistically, join a mining pool--a group of miners that combine their computing ability and split the mined bitcoin. Mining pools are similar to people Powerball clubs whose members purchase 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 previous 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 below the goal is just 1 in 2,874,674,234,416--significantly less than 1 in two trillion. .

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The aforementioned site Cryptocompare delivers a helpful calculator which allows you to plug in numbers such as your hash rate, electricity prices etc. to estimate 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 discover the solution is equivalent to the portion of the total mining energy on the network.  Participants with 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 bucks would represent less than 0.001% of their network's mining energy.  With such a small chance at my link 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 recover their investment.  The answer to this problem 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 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 mentioned, the simplest way to acquire Bitcoin is to buy it on an exchange such as Coinbase.com. Alternately, you can my blog 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 goldbut rather to create 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. .