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If you are mining Bitcoin, you do not need to calculate the total value of that 64-digit number (the hash). I repeat: You do not need to calculate the entire 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 huge computers and dozens of cooling fans is guessing at 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 key 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 can achieve the same goal by rolling a 16-sided die 64 times to Reach random numbers, but why on earth do you want to do that

The screenshot below, taken by the site Blockchain.info, might help you put all of this information together at 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 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, go to this page and scroll down to the heading"Transactions." .

There's no minimum target, but there is a maximum target determined by the Bitcoin Protocol. No goal can be higher 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 have to find a fast mining rig or, more realistically, join a mining pool--a bunch of miners who combine their computing ability and divide the mined bitcoin. Mining pools are comparable to those Powerball clubs whose members purchase lottery tickets en masse and agree to discuss any winnings. A disproportionately large number of cubes 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 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--less than 1 in 2 trillion. .

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

Mining benefits are paid to the miner who discovers a solution to the puzzle first, 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 which have a small percentage of the mining best site capability stand a tiny find this chance of discovering the next block on their own.  For instance, a mining card that one could buy for a couple thousand bucks would represent less than 0.001% of the network's mining energy.  With such a tiny chance at finding the next block, it might be a long time before that miner finds out a block, and the problem going up makes things even worse.  The miner may never recover 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 stream of bitcoin starting the day that they activate their miner.  Statistics on a few 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 like Coinbase.com. Alternately, you can consistently leverage the"pickaxe plan". This is based on the old saw that during the 1848 California look at this now gold rush, the wise investment was not to pan for gold, but rather to create the pickaxes used for mining.

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