X11 Cryptocurrency - The Facts
Insteadthey went with Solution 2. The resulting currency, known as bitcoin money, increased the blocksize to 8 Mb in order to accelerate the verification process to permit a performance of around 2 million transactions every day. In the time of writing, Bitcoin Cash is valued at $545.00 to Bitcoins $6,328.11.
When you hear about bitcoin mining, you envisage coins being dug out of the ground. But bitcoin isnt physical, so why do we call it mining
Since its like gold mining in that the bitcoins exist in the protocols design (just as the gold is underground), but they havent been introduced into the light yet (just as the golden hasnt been awakened ). The bitcoin protocol stipulates that 21 million bitcoins will exist at some point.
They get to perform this as a reward for creating blocks of confirmed transactions and including them in the blockchain.
Backtracking a little, lets talk about nodes. A node is a powerful computer which runs the bitcoin applications and helps keep bitcoin running by participating in the relay of information. Anyone can run a node, you just download the bitcoin applications (free) and leave a certain port open (the drawback is that it consumes energy and storage space the network at time of writing carries up about 145GB).
One node will send information to a few nodes which it knows, who will relay the information to nodes they know, etc.. This way it ends up getting around the whole network fairly fast. .
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 so by solving a complex mathematical puzzle that's a portion of this bitcoin program, and including the answer in the block. The puzzle that needs solving is to find a number that, when combined with the information in the cube and passed via a hash function, produces a result that is within a certain range.
How can they find this number By guessing at random. The hash function makes it impossible to forecast what the outcome will be. So, miners guess the puzzle number and apply the hash function to the combination of the guessed number and the information in the block. The resulting hash must start with a pre-established number of zeroes.
Whats more, there might be several nonces that produce the desired result, or there might be none (in which case the miners keep trying, but using a different block configuration). .
The first miner to get a resulting hash within the desirable range announces its victory to the remainder of the network. All the other miners immediately stop work on that block and begin trying to figure out the puzzle number for your next one. As a reward for its own work, the victorious miner gets some new bitcoin. .
In the time of writing, the payoff is 12.5 bitcoins, which at time of writing will be worth almost $200,000.
Also, the costs of being a mining node are considerable, not only because of the powerful hardware needed (if you've got a faster processor than your competitors, you have a better chance of finding the right number before they do), but also due to the large amounts of electricity that running these chips consumes. .
And, the number of bitcoins awarded as a reward for solving the puzzle will decrease. Its 12.5 now, however, it halves every four years or so (the next one is anticipated in 2020-21). The value of bitcoin relative to price of power and hardware could extend up over the next few years to partly compensate this reduction, but its not certain. .
The difficulty of the calculation (the necessary number of zeroes at the beginning of the hash string) is adjusted frequently, so that it takes 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 to get a steady and diminishing flow of new coins until the highest number of 21 million is attained (anticipated some time in 2140).