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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 figure the total value of a hash.

Remember that ELI5 analogy, in which 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 objective hash.

What miners are doing with those huge computers and dozens of cooling fans is guessing at the hash. Miners make these guesses by randomly generating as many"nonces" as possible, as quickly 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 primary miner whose nonce generates a hash that is less than or equivalent to the target hash is awarded credit for completing that block, and is given the spoils of 12.5 BTC. .

In theory you could achieve the same aim by rolling a 16-sided die 64 days 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 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 top.

As you see here, their contribution into the Bitcoin community is they confirmed 1768 transactions for this cube. If you really want to find all 1768 of those transactions for this block, then 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 standards for if they will lead to achievement for your miner:

You would have to find a fast 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 somewhat similar to people Powerball clubs whose members purchase lottery tickets en masse and agree to share any winnings. A disproportionately large number of cubes 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 preceding goal hashes. The difficulty my sources 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 2 trillion. .

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

Mining rewards are paid to the miner who home discovers a solution to the puzzle , and also the probability that a participant will be the one to find the solution is equal to the portion of the total mining power on the network.  Participants with a small percentage of their mining capability 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 bucks would represent less than 0.001percent of their 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 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 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 purchase it on an exchange like Coinbase.com. Alternately, you can always leverage the"pickaxe strategy". This relies on the old saw that during the 1848 California gold rush, the wise investment was not to pan for gold, but rather to create the pickaxes taken 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. .