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If you're 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 paper 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 huge computers and dozens of cooling fans is guessing at the 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 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 awarded credit for completing that obstruct, and is given the spoils of 12.5 BTC. .

In theory you can Attain the Exact Same goal by rolling a 16-sided die 64 days to Reach 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 of this information together at a glance. You are looking at a summary 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 to the Bitcoin community is that they confirmed 1768 transactions for this block. If you really 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 target can be greater than this number:

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

You'd have to get a fast mining rig , more realistically, join a mining pool--a bunch of miners that combine their computing power and divide the mined bitcoin. Mining pools are somewhat similar to people Powerball clubs whose members purchase lottery tickets en masse and consent to share any winnings. A disproportionately large number of cubes are mined by pools rather than by individual miners. .

In other words, it's 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--less than 1 in 2 trillion. .

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

Mining benefits are paid into the miner who discovers a solution to the puzzle , and also the likelihood that a participant is going to be the one to find the solution is equivalent to the portion of the entire mining power on the network.  Participants with a small percentage of the mining capability stand a tiny chance of discovering the next block on their own.  For instance, a mining card that one could purchase for a few thousand bucks would represent less than 0.001percent of helpful site the 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 problem 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 get a steady flow 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 mentioned, the easiest way to acquire Bitcoin is to purchase it on an exchange such as 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 instead to make the pickaxes used for mining.

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