Unlike traditional currencies, bitcoins are not printed; instead, bitcoins are mined. If you think that bitcoins are mined by using shovels and other equipment, just like the gold are mined from gold mines, you are mistaken.
Bitcoin is not a physical currency. Thus, the process of getting bitcoins is not the same as the process of getting traditional currencies.
Why is the process called bitcoin mining?
Well, just like the gold occurs in gold mines, bitcoins occur in protocol design. As per the bitcoin protocol, only 21 million bitcoins can be mined. By the process of bitcoin mining, miners will bring these 21 million bitcoins to light. Once all of 21 million bitcoins are mined thoroughly, there won’t be any bitcoins left to be mined. Miners involved in the bitcoin mining process get transaction fees for creating blocks and validating different bitcoin transactions.
How does bitcoin mining work?
The working of bitcoin mining is pretty simple and straightforward. To understand how mining works, you have to know about nodes. A node is a powerful computer that runs the software, which helps validate the bitcoin transactions and blocks. The bitcoin network works in a decentralized form, and thus the nodes are collectively responsible for validating bitcoin transactions.
Anyone can quickly run a node. All you need to do is download the bitcoin software. The most significant advantage with the node is that it consumes lots of energy, and it needs lots of storage space; thus, a standard computer with limited storage won’t be able to mine bitcoins. The bitcoin network writes hundreds of gigabytes of data. The nodes are used to properly spread bitcoin transactions across the network. One node helps in sending information to a few nodes that it already knows about. Then the other nodes relay information to a few others, and in this way, the bitcoin network functions. You can visit Like this website to get details about how nodes functions.
Among all these types of nodes, some nodes are called mining nodes, and they are usually called miners. These nodes help collaborate different transactions into chunks or blocks, and then, these are added to the bitcoin network. Blockchain technology is the idea behind these fantastic tasks performed by nodes.
The addition of these bitcoins into blocks and networks is like solving a puzzle. When data is combined in the blocks, it has to pass through a hash function. The hash function makes it quite challenging to know what output it will get. Thus, the miners have to guess the mystery number, and they apply the hash function to the combination of the guessed number and the data stored in the block. The hash mostly begins with a certain number of zeroes. There are almost negligible chances of people knowing which number will work. This is because two consecutive numbers used can give a varied range of results. Thus, the miners keep on trying with different block configurations.
The calculations are pretty tricky as the miners don’t have any idea or information about how many zeroes are needed at the time of creating hash strings. Thus, it takes at least 10 minutes on an average to process the block.
Ten minutes is needed to process blocks as this is the amount of time required that bitcoin developers think that it will be required to get a steady and diminishing flow of new coins till the time goal of 21 million is reached. As per a few research, the purpose of 21 million will be reached sometime around 2041.
Numerous miners are involved in this task, and the first miner who gets the result announces his/her victory to the rest of the network. Then, all other miners stop working on that block, and they start figuring out the mystery of the next block. As a reward for getting the victory, the miner gets some new bitcoins as rewards.
At present, the reward for getting a victory is 6.25 bitcoins per block. This means it is almost worth $60,000 in June 2020.
Hundreds of miners work day and night to get the reward. The more and better calculation you can perform, the more victory you will get. We hope this article will help you in understanding the functioning of bitcoins.
