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If you're mining Bitcoin, you do not need to figure the total value of that 64-digit number (the hash). I repeat: You do not need to figure 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 called the target hash.

What miners are doing with these tremendous computers and dozens of cooling fans is guessing in the target 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 key to generating these 64-bit hexadecimal numbers I keep talking about.

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The primary miner whose nonce generates a hash that 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 achieve the same goal by rolling a 16-sided die 64 times to arrive at random numbers, but why on earth would you want to do this

The screenshot below, taken by the website Blockchain.info, might enable you to put all of this information together in a glance. You are 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 to the Bitcoin community is that they confirmed 1768 transactions for this block. If you truly want to find all 1768 of these transactions for this block, go to this page and scroll down to the heading"Transactions." .

There is no minimum goal, 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 achievement for your miner:

You would have to find a fast mining rig or, more realistically, join a mining pool--a bunch of miners that combine their computing power and divide the mined bitcoin. Mining pools are somewhat comparable to people 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 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 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 target is 1 read this post here in 2,874,674,234,416--less than 1 in 2 trillion. .

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The aforementioned site Cryptocompare delivers a helpful calculator that permits you to plug in numbers like your hash speed, power costs etc., to gauge the costs and benefits.

Mining benefits are paid into the miner who finds a solution to the puzzle , and the probability that a participant is going to be the one to find the solution is equivalent to the portion of the total mining energy on the network.  Participants which have a small percentage of their mining capability stand a very small chance of discovering the next block on their own.  For instance, a mining card that one could purchase to get a few thousand dollars would represent less than 0.001% of the network's mining power.  With such a tiny chance at finding the next block, it could be a long time before that miner finds a block, and also the problem going up makes things even worse.  The miner may never recoup their investment.  The answer to this predicament is mining pools.  Mining pools website link 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 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 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 gold rush, the wise investment was not to pan for goldbut rather to make the pickaxes taken for mining.

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