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If you're 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 calculate 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 terms, 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 at the target 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 key 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 equivalent to the target hash is given credit for completing that block, and is awarded the spoils of 12.5 BTC. .

In theory you could achieve the Exact Same aim by rolling a 16-sided expire 64 times to Reach 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 this information together in a glance. You're looking at a list 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 into the Bitcoin community is they confirmed 1768 transactions for this block. If you truly want to find all 1768 of those 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 determined by the Bitcoin Protocol. No goal can be higher 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 need to get a speedy mining rig , more realistically, join a mining pool--a bunch of miners that combine their computing power and divide the mined bitcoin. Mining pools are similar to people Powerball clubs whose members buy lottery tickets en masse and agree to share any winnings. A disproportionately large number of blocks are mined by pools rather than by individual miners. .

In other words, it is literally only a numbers game.  You cannot imagine the pattern or make a prediction based on preceding 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--less than 1 in 2 trillion. .

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The aforementioned website Cryptocompare delivers a helpful calculator which allows you to plug in numbers such as your hash speed, electricity prices etc. to estimate the costs and benefits.

Mining benefits are paid into the miner who discovers a solution to the puzzle , and the look here 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 buy to get a couple thousand bucks would represent less than 0.001percent of the network's mining power.  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 problem is mining pools.  Mining pools are operated 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 day that they activate their miner.  Statistics on some of the mining pools can be seen on Blockchain.info. .

Sure. As mentioned, the simplest way to acquire Bitcoin is to buy it on an exchange like 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 goldbut instead 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 that make ASICs miners or GPU miners. .