Everything you need to know about Bitcoin Mining

Bitcoin celebrated its 10^th anniversary of existence in 2019. It is the most popular cryptocurrency in the world. With paper money, the government is in control of when to print and how to distribute money. It is a centralized system of currency management. On the other hand, cryptocurrency is a decentralized currency system.  A cryptocurrency is designed to be a decentralized and secure form of currency. While Bitcoin has had a rollercoaster ride until now, it is fair to believe that it is here to stay. Most people believe Bitcoin mining is about finding coins, but it’s a lot more complex than that.

Bitcoin mining is a process of adding transactions to a digital currency system. The current records are called blocks, which are added to the digital currency system, which contains past records, known as the blockchain. The blockchain is the public ledger of Bitcoin. A Bitcoin is defined by the digitally signed record of its transaction and is used to confirm the transaction. Users on the Bitcoin network can access the ledger. The blockchain also contains a record of any attempts at re-spending the money that has already been used elsewhere. The fundamental objective of Bitcoin mining is to distinguish each Bitcoin transaction by creating a history of transactions in a way that is impractical to computationally alter that entry. The use of the word mining is because of the similarities of mining commodities, in which there is a need for a certain amount of work required to gradually extract the commodities that are then made available to the world.

How does it work?

The job of the Bitcoin miner is to validate transactions and add them to a block. The miner gets a reward every time a new block is completed. Typically, the reward is a certain number of bitcoins per block. Rewarding miners with bitcoins further increase the market penetration of Bitcoin while increasing the security of the system through mining. The mining rig is the computer used by miners. Miners use computer software and hardware to perform certain computational algorithms.

How difficult is Bitcoin mining?

Bitcoin mining has been designed to be difficult to keep a steady flow of blocks being mined every day. The ease of mining determines the level of difficulty of mining Bitcoin. A hash rate is used to determine the health of the proof-of-work network. The hash rate is used to show the power of the miners within the network. In other words, the higher the hash rate, the higher is the speed and security of the network. To have a consistent flow of blocks, the mining difficulty is adjusted. When the hash rate gets high, so does the difficulty of Bitcoin mining. A proof of work is necessary to deter malicious or frivolous use of computing power. Miners can detect tampering through hashes, a string of numbers that serve as proof of work. Bitcoin uses the SHA-256 hash function. Any change in the original data results in totally unrecognizable hash resulting in tampering to be caught and the network rejects the transaction. The longer the hash, the more is the difficulty of mining.

Mining can be very competitive and your luck has a role to play because proof of work could be a random process with low probability. There is a lot of trial and error required to achieve consistnet positive results.  Typically, a miner will generate a proof of work every 10 minutes, but that miner could be anybody. Some miners have decided to pool together to create a miners pool. This increases their chance of achieving better results. The proof of the network makes sure there is no monopoly of any particular network. The hardware required to complete the hashes is expensive and not affordable for many miners. For a block to be accepted, the hash of block’s header must be lower or equal to the target for that block.

What is Bitcoin cloud mining?

Cloud computing is one of the fastest-growing trends, not only cryptocurrency but other industries as well. Cloud mining offers an online platform to mine without the need to install all the hardware typically required for mining. Several companies offer cloud mining services. You can open an account with these companies and for a certain amount of money, you can use their online servers to do cloud mining. The major advantage of cloud mining is that there is no need to spend a lot of money on equipment and utilities. Another advantage is the quick scaling up of resources. Rather than having to buy better hardware, you can upgrade the account. There are certain disadvantages to cloud mining. There is a greater chance of fraud and unverifiable cloud operations. You have stick to the reputed providers of cloud services. You are also limited to the type of software you use for Bitcoin. Another disadvantage is that companies can terminate contracts if the Bitcoin price is too low.