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If you are mining Bitcoin, you do not need to figure 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 newspaper and put it in a sealed envelope

In Bitcoin mining conditions, 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 hash. Miners create these guesses by randomly generating as many"nonces" as you can, as quickly as possible. A nonce is short for"number only used once," and the nonce is the secret to generating these 64-bit hexadecimal numbers I keep talking about.

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The first miner whose nonce generates a hash that is less than or equal to the target hash is given credit for completing that block, 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 times to arrive at random numbers, but why on earth do you want to do that

The screenshot below, taken from the website Blockchain.info, might help you put all this information together at a glance. You're looking at a summary of everything that happened when block 490163 was mined. The nonce that generated the "winning" hash was 731511405. The target hash is shown on the top.

As you see here, their contribution into the Bitcoin community is that they confirmed 1768 transactions for this block. If you really want to find all 1768 of these 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 goal determined by the Bitcoin Protocol. No target can be greater than this number:

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

You'd need to get a speedy mining rig , more realistically, join a mining pool--a group of miners that combine their computing power and split the mined bitcoin. Mining pools are somewhat comparable to those Powerball clubs whose members purchase lottery tickets en masse and agree to share any winnings. A disproportionately high number of blocks are mined by pools rather article 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 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 target is 1 in 2,874,674,234,416--less than 1 in 2 trillion. .

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The aforementioned site Cryptocompare delivers a very helpful calculator which allows you to plug in numbers such as your hash speed, power costs etc., to gauge the costs and benefits.

Mining rewards are paid to the miner who discovers a solution to the puzzle first, and the probability that a participant will be the one to find 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 buy to get a few thousand bucks would represent less than 0.001percent of their network's mining power.  With such a tiny chance at finding the next block, it might 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 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 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 discussed, the easiest way to get Bitcoin is to purchase it on an exchange like Coinbase.com. Alternately, you can consistently 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 rather to look at this website make the pickaxes taken for mining.

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