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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 figure 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 called the target hash.

What miners are doing with those huge computers and dozens of cooling fans is guessing at the hash. Miners make 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 can Attain the Exact Same goal by rolling a 16-sided die 64 times to Reach random numbers, but why on earth would you want to do this

The screenshot below, taken from the site Blockchain.info, might enable you to put all this information together at a glance. You are looking at a summary of everything that happened when obstruct #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 to the Bitcoin community is 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'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 the miner:

You would have to get a speedy mining rig , more realistically, join a mining pool--a bunch of miners who combine their computing power and split the mined bitcoin. Mining pools are comparable to people Powerball clubs whose members purchase lottery tickets en masse and agree 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 Discover More 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 beneath 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 permits you to plug in numbers like your hash speed, power costs etc., to gauge the costs and benefits.

Mining rewards are paid into the miner who finds a solution to the puzzle first, and also the likelihood that a participant will be the one to discover the solution is equal to the portion of the total mining energy on the network.  Participants which have a small percentage of their mining informative post capability stand a tiny chance of discovering the next block on their own.  For instance, a mining card that one could buy for a few thousand dollars would represent less than 0.001percent of their network's mining energy.  With such a tiny chance at finding the next block, it could be a long time before that miner finds 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 find a steady stream of bitcoin starting the afternoon they trigger their miner.  Statistics on a few of the mining pools can be seen on Blockchain.info. .

Sure. As mentioned, the simplest way to get Bitcoin is to purchase it on an exchange such as Coinbase.com. Alternately, you can always leverage the"pickaxe plan". This relies on the old saw that during the 1848 California gold rush, the wise investment was not to pan for gold, but instead to create the pickaxes taken 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 look into companies which make ASICs miners or GPU miners. .