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If you're mining Bitcoin, you do not need to figure the entire 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 wrote the number 19 on a piece of paper and put it in a sealed envelope

In Bitcoin mining conditions, that metaphorical undisclosed number in the envelope is called 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 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 which 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 can achieve the same goal by rolling a 16-sided die 64 times to Reach random numbers, but why on earth would you want to do that

The screenshot below, taken by the website Blockchain.info, might enable you to put all this information together in a glance. You're 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 cube. 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 target set 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 the miner:

You'd have to find 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 similar to people Powerball clubs whose members purchase lottery tickets en masse and agree to share any winnings. A disproportionately high number of cubes are mined by pools rather 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 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 offers a very helpful calculator which permits you to plug in numbers such as your hash speed, power prices etc., to estimate the costs and benefits.

Mining rewards are paid to the miner who discovers a solution to the puzzle first, and the likelihood 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 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 for a few thousand dollars would represent less than 0.001% of their network's mining power.  With such a small 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 recoup 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 stream of bitcoin starting the afternoon that they trigger their miner.  Statistics on a few of the mining pools can be seen on Blockchain.info. .

Sure. As mentioned, the easiest way to get Bitcoin is to buy it on an exchange like Coinbase.com. Alternately, you can always leverage the"pickaxe strategy". This is based on the old saw that during the 1848 California gold rush, the smart investment was not to pan for gold, but instead to make the pickaxes taken for mining. important source

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