Bitcoin Mining
What is Bitcoin Mining
Bitcoin mining is the process of updating the ledger of Bitcoin transactions known as the blockchain. Mining is done by running extremely powerful computers called ASICs that race against other miners in an attempt to guess a specific number.
The first miner to guess the number gets to update the ledger of transactions and also receives a reward of newly minted Bitcoins (currently the reward is 6.25 Bitcoins).
Today, in order to be profitable with Bitcoin mining you need to invest heavily in equipment, cooling, and storage. It’s not possible to mine Bitcoin profitably with a PC or a GPU at home. You can calculate your profitability using a Bitcoin mining calculator.
Here's what you’ll need to do to get started with Bitcoin mining:
- Calculate mining profitability
- Get a Bitcoin miner
- Get a Bitcoin wallet
- Find a mining pool
- Download a mining program
- Start Mining!
That’s Bitcoin mining in a nutshell. If you want a more detailed explanation about mining keep reading this post. Here’s what I’ll cover:
- What is Bitcoin Mining?
- Mining Difficulty
- The Evolution of Bitcoin Miners
- Bitcoin Mining Pools
- Is Bitcoin Mining Profitable?
- Step-by-Step Guide for Mining at Home
- Additional Types of Mining
- Frequently Asked Questions
- Conclusion – Is Bitcoin Mining Worth It?
1. What is Bitcoin Mining?
Bitcoin is a decentralized alternative to the banking system. This means that the system can operate and transfer funds from one account tawo the other without any central authority.
With a trusted central authority, transferring money is easy. Just tell the bank you want to remove $50 from your account and add it to someone else’s account. In this example, the bank has all the power because the bank is the only one that is allowed to update the ledger that holds the balances of everyone in the system.
Bitcoin, on the other hand, creates a system that has a decentralized ledger. It gives independent miners the ability to update the ledger without giving them too much power.
How Mining Works
Anyone who wants to participate in updating the ledger of Bitcoin transactions, known as the blockchain, can do so. All you need is to guess a random number that solves an equation generated by the system. Sounds simple, right? Of course, this guessing is all done by your computer. The more powerful your computer is, the more guesses you can make in a second, increasing your chances of winning this game. If you manage to guess right, you earn bitcoins and get to write the “next page” of Bitcoin transactions on the blockchain. The solution to the equation is very hard to achieve but very easy to validate. You can think of a Rubik’s cube as a good example for this (very hard to solve, but easy to see you’ve solved it).
Rubik’s cube – hard to solve, easy to prove you’ve solved it
The Mining Process in a Nutshell
Once your mining computer comes up with the right guess, your computer determines which pending transactions will be inserted in the next block of transactions on the blockchain. Compiling this block represents your moment of glory, as you’ve now become a temporary banker of Bitcoin who gets to update the Bitcoin transaction ledger. The block of transactions you’ve created, along with your solution, is sent to the whole network so other computers can validate it. Each computer that validates your solution updates its copy of the Bitcoin transaction ledger with the transactions that you chose to include in the block. The system generates a fixed amount of Bitcoins (currently 6.25 ) and rewards them to you as compensation for the time and energy you spent solving the math problem. Additionally, you get paid any transaction fees that were attached to the transactions you inserted into the next block. All the transactions in the block you’ve just entered are now confirmed by the Bitcoin network and are virtually irreversible. Here’s a two-minute video showing the process of blocks and confirmations. So that’s Bitcoin mining in a nutshell. It’s called mining because of the fact that this process helps “mine” new Bitcoins from the system. But if you think about it, the mining part is just a by-product of the transaction confirmation process. So the name is a bit misleading, since the main goal of mining is to maintain the ledger in a decentralized manner. Since mining is based on a form of guessing, each time a different miner will guess the number and be granted the right to update the blockchain. Of course, the miners with more computing power will succeed more often, but due to the law of statistical probability, it’s highly unlikely that the same miner will succeed every time.
2. Mining difficulty
Now that you know what Bitcoin mining is, you might be thinking, “Cool! Free money! Where do I sign up?” Well, not so fast… Satoshi Nakamoto, Bitcoin’s inventor, crafted the rules for mining in a way that the more mining power the network has, the harder it is to guess the answer to the mining math problem. So the difficulty of the mining process is actually self-adjusting to the accumulated mining power the network possesses. If more miners join, it will get harder to solve the problem; if many of them drop off, it will get easier. This is known as mining difficulty.
Mining difficulty adjusts every 2016 blocks
Difficulty Adjustment
Difficulty is self-adjusting in order to create a steady flow of new Bitcoins into the system. In a sense, this was done to keep inflation in check. Mining difficulty is set so that, on average, a new block will be added every ten minutes (i.e., the number will be guessed every ten minutes on average). Now, remember, this is on average. We can have two blocks being added minute after minute and then wait an hour for the next block. In the long run, this will even out to ten minutes on average. The difficulty adjustment is done every 2016 blocks (every 2 weeks on average) retroactively. Meaning, every 2016 blocks the system looks back on the past 2016 blocks and calculates the average block time. If it’s under 10 minutes it will increase the difficulty, if it’s over 10 minutes it will lower it.
3. Bitcoin Mining Hardware
CPU mining
When Bitcoin first started out, there weren’t a lot of miners out there. In fact, Satoshi, the inventor of Bitcoin, and his friend Hal Finney were a couple of the only people mining Bitcoin back at the time with their own personal computers. Using your CPU (central processing unit—your computer’s brain) was enough for mining Bitcoin back in 2009, since mining difficulty was very low. As Bitcoin started to catch on, people looked for more powerful mining solutions.
GPU mining
A GPU (graphics processing unit) is a special component added to computers to carry out more complex calculations. GPUs were originally intended to allow gamers to run computer games with intense graphics requirements. Because of their architecture, GPUs became popular in the field of cryptography, and around 2011, people also started using them to mine Bitcoins. For reference, the mining power of one GPU equals that of around 30 CPUs. GPUs were used for mining Bitcoin in the past
FPGA mining
FPGA is a piece of hardware that can be connected to a computer in order to run a set of calculations. They are just like GPUs but 3–100 times faster. The downside is that they’re harder to configure, which is why they weren’t as commonly used in mining as GPUs. FPGAs are more efficient than GPUs for mining purposes
ASIC mining
Around 2013, a new breed of miner was introduced: the ASIC miner. ASIC stands for Application Specific Integrated Circuit. ASICs are pieces of hardware manufactured solely for the purpose of mining Bitcoin. Unlike GPUs, CPUs, and FPGAs, they couldn’t be used to do anything else. Their function was hardcoded into the machine. Today, ASIC miners are the current mining standard. Some early ASIC miners even appeared in the form of a USB, but they became obsolete rather quickly. Even though they started out in 2013, the technology quickly evolved, and new, more powerful miners were coming out every six months. An ASIC USB mining rig with a fan on top After about three years of this crazy technological race, we finally reached a technological barrier, and things started to cool down a bit. Since 2016, the pace at which new miners are released has slowed considerably. A Bitcoin ASIC miner used for mining Bitcoin
4. Bitcoin Mining Pools
Mining is an extremely competitive game. Even if you buy the best possible miner out there, you’re still at a huge disadvantage compared to professional Bitcoin mining farms. That’s why mining pools came into existence. The idea is simple – miners group together to form a “pool” so they can combine their mining power and compete more effectively. Once the pool manages to win the competition, the reward is spread out between the pool members depending on how much mining power each of them contributed. This way, even small miners can join the mining game and have a chance of earning Bitcoin (though they get only a part of the reward). The market share of the most popular Bitcoin mining pools in 2020 Today there are over a dozen large pools that compete for the chance to mine Bitcoin and update the ledger. According to certain reports, 65% of all Bitcoin mining worldwide is done in China due to cheap electricity, manufacturing costs and weather conditions.
5. Is Bitcoin Mining Profitable?
The short answer is “probably not”; the correct answer is “it depends on a lot of factors.” When calculating Bitcoin mining profitability, there are a lot of things you need to take into account. Let’s break them down.
Hashrate (how powerful is your miner)
A Hash is the mathematical problem the miner’s computer needs to solve. The hashrate refers to your miner’s performance (i.e., how many guesses your computer can make per second). Hashrate can be measured in MH/s (mega hash = 1m hashes per second), GH/s (giga hash = 1b per hashes second), TH/s (terra hash = 1t hashes per second), and even PH/s (peta hash = 1000t hashes per second).
Bitcoin Reward
The number of Bitcoins generated when a miner finds a solution (in other words “solves a block”). This number started at 50 bitcoins back in 2009, and it’s halved every 210,000 blocks (about four years). The current number of Bitcoins awarded per block is 6.25. The last block-halving occurred in May 2020, and the next one will be on 2024. Once the halving occurs the reward will decrease to 3.125 Bitcoin.
Mining difficulty
A number that represents how hard it is to mine bitcoins at any given moment considering the amount of mining power currently active in the system.
Electricity cost
Also known as “how many dollars are you paying per kilowatt to get electricity?” You’ll need to find out your electricity rate in order to calculate profitability. This can usually be found on your monthly electricity bill. The reason this is important is that miners consume electricity, whether for powering up the miner or for cooling it down (these machines can get really hot and noisy).
Power consumption
Each miner consumes a different amount of energy. You’ll need to find out the exact power consumption of your miner before calculating profitability. This can be found easily with a quick search online. Power consumption is measured in watts.
Pool fees
If you’re mining through a mining pool, then the pool will take a certain percentage of your earnings for rendering their service. Generally, this would be somewhere around 2%.
Bitcoin’s price
Since no one knows what Bitcoin’s price will be in the future, it’s hard to predict whether Bitcoin mining will be profitable. If you are planning to convert your mined bitcoins to any other currency in the future, this variable will have a significant impact on profitability.
Difficulty increase per year
This is probably the most important and elusive variable of them all. The idea is that since no one can actually predict the rate of miners joining the network, neither can anyone predict how difficult it will be to mine in six weeks, six months, or six years from now. In fact, in all the time Bitcoin has existed, its profitability has dropped only a handful of times—even at times when the price was relatively low. The last two factors (price and difficulty increase) are the reason no one will ever be able to give a 100% accurate answer to the question “is Bitcoin mining profitable?” Once you have all of these variables at hand you can insert them into a Bitcoin mining calculator (as can be seen below) and get an estimate of how many Bitcoins you will earn each month. If you can’t get a positive result on the calculator, it probably means you don’t have the right conditions for mining to be profitable.
