Are Bitcoins A Scam for Beginners

If you are 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 wrote the number 19 on a piece of paper 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 in the hash. Miners make these guesses by randomly generating as many"nonces" as possible, as fast as possible. A nonce is short for"number only used once," and also 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 which is less than or equal 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 Exact Same aim 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 help you put all this information together at a glance. You're looking at a summary of everything which happened when block #490163 was mined. The nonce that generated the "winning" hash was 731511405. The target 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 truly 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 goal, but there is a maximum goal determined by the Bitcoin Protocol. No goal can be greater than this number:

Here are some examples of randomized hashes and the standards for if they will lead to achievement for your miner:

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

In other words, it is literally just a numbers game.  You cannot guess 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 below the goal is 1 in 2,874,674,234,416--significantly less than 1 in two trillion. .

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The aforementioned site Cryptocompare offers a very helpful calculator which allows you to plug in numbers like your hash speed, power costs etc. to estimate the costs and benefits.

Mining benefits are paid to the miner who discovers a solution to the puzzle first, see this page and also the likelihood that a participant is going to be the one to find the solution is equivalent to the portion of the entire mining power on the network.  Participants with 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 power.  With such a small 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 problem is mining pools.  Mining pools are run 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 flow of bitcoin starting the afternoon they activate their miner.  Statistics on some 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 strategy". This is based on the old saw that during imp source the 1848 California gold rush, the smart investment was not to pan for goldbut rather to make the pickaxes used for mining.

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