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Instead, they went with Solution 2. The resulting currency, called bitcoin money, increased the blocksize to 8 Mb in order to accelerate the verification process to permit a performance of around 2 million transactions per day. In the time of writing, Bitcoin Cash is valued at $545.00 to Bitcoins $6,328.11.
When you hear bitcoin mining, you envisage coins being dug out of the ground. However, bitcoin isnt physical, so why do we call it mining
Because its similar to gold mining in that the bitcoins exist in the protocols design (just as the gold is underground), but they havent been brought out into the mild yet (like the golden hasnt been dug up). The bitcoin protocol stipulates that 21 million bitcoins will exist at some point.
They get to perform so as a reward for creating cubes of confirmed transactions and including them in the blockchain.
Backtracking a little, lets discuss nodes. A node is a powerful computer which runs the bitcoin applications and helps to keep bitcoin running by participating in the relay of information. Anyone can run a node, you just download the bitcoin software (totally free ) and also leave a certain port open (the downside is that it consumes energy and storage space the network at time of writing carries up about 145GB).
One node will send information to some nodes which it knows, who will relay the information to nodes that they know, etc.. That way it ends up getting around the entire network pretty quickly. .
Some nodes are mining nodes (usually referred to as miners). These group outstanding transactions into cubes and add them to the blockchain. How do they do this By solving a complex mathematical mystery that's part of this bitcoin program, and including the answer in the block. The puzzle that needs solving is to find a number which, when combined with all the data in the block and passed via a hash function, creates a result that's within a certain range.
(For fiction fans, this number is called a nonce, which can be a concatenation of number employed once. In the case of bitcoin, the nonce is an integer between 0 and 4,294,967,296.)
How do they find this number By guessing at random. The hash function which makes it impossible to forecast what the output will be. So, click this link miners guess the puzzle number and apply the hash function to the combination of the guessed number and the information in the cube. The resulting hash has to start with a pre-established number of zeroes.
Whats more, there might be several nonces that make the intended result, or there might be none (in the event the miners keep trying, but using a different block configuration). .
The first miner to acquire a resulting hash within the desirable range announces its success to the rest of the network. All the other miners immediately stop work on that block and start trying to figure out the puzzle number for the next one. As a reward for the own work, the victorious miner has some new bitcoin. .
At the time of writing, the reward is 12.5 bitcoins, which at time of writing is worth almost $200,000.
Although its not nearly as cushy a bargain as it sounds. There are a lot of mining nodes competing for that benefit, and it's a question of luck and computing power (the more guessing calculations you can perform, the luckier you're ).
Additionally, the expenses of being a mining node are considerable, not only because of the effective hardware needed (in case you have a faster processor than your competitors, you have a better chance of finding the correct number before they do), but also because of the large amounts of power that running these chips consumes. .
And, the number of bitcoins given as a reward for solving the mystery will decrease. Its 12.5 now, but it pits each four years or so (the next one is anticipated in 2020-21). The worth of bitcoin relative to cost of electricity blog here and hardware could extend up over the next few decades to partially compensate this reduction, but its not certain. .
The difficulty of the calculation (the required number of zeroes that site at the beginning of the hash string) is adjusted frequently, so it requires on average about 10 minutes to process a block.
Why 10 minutes That is the amount of time that the bitcoin developers think is necessary for a steady and diminishing flow of new coins until the highest number of 21 million is attained (anticipated some time in 2140).