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

Bear in Mind 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 target hash.

What miners are doing with these huge computers and dozens of cooling fans is guessing at the target 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 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 equivalent to the target hash is given credit for completing that obstruct, and is awarded the spoils of 12.5 BTC. .

In theory you could achieve the same aim 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 in 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 the top.

As you see here, their contribution to the Bitcoin community is they confirmed 1768 transactions for this cube. If you really want to see all 1768 of those transactions for this block, then go to this webpage 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 higher than this number:

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

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

In other words, it's literally only a numbers game.  You cannot imagine 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 beneath the target is just 1 in 2,874,674,234,416--less than 1 in two trillion. .

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The aforementioned website Cryptocompare delivers a helpful calculator which permits you to plug in numbers such as your hash rate, electricity costs etc., to gauge the costs and benefits.

Mining benefits are paid into the miner who finds 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 energy useful content on the network.  Participants which have 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 purchase to get 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 might 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 operated by third parties and coordinate groups of miners.  By working together in a swimming pool and sharing the payouts amongst participants, miners can find a steady flow of bitcoin starting the afternoon that they trigger their miner.  Statistics on some of the mining pools can be seen on Blockchain.info. .

Sure. As discussed, the simplest way to get Bitcoin is to buy it on an exchange like Coinbase.com. Alternately, you can consistently leverage the"pickaxe strategy". This is based on the old saw that during the 1848 California gold rush, the wise investment was not to pan for gold, but instead to 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 which make ASICs miners or GPU miners. .