although we tend to take it for granted, when satoshi invented proof-of-work (pow) mining, he really created a revolutionary new technology. Thanks to his contribution, we are now able to mine bitcoins and hopefully earn a nice reward for protecting the network.
A question people sometimes ask is, how long does it take to mine 1 bitcoin? is a good question but, as we will see, it does not necessarily have a simple answer.
Reading: How long does it take to mine 1 bitcoin
how long does it take to mine 1 bitcoin? understanding bitcoin block rewards
How long does it take to mine a bitcoin?
well actually it is not possible to mine only 1 bitcoin because the reward of each block is 6.25 btc. it used to be 12.5 btc until May 2020 when it was halved and the block reward was halved.
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so there is no way to mine just 1 bitcoin. Either you win the block reward and receive 6.25 bitcoins or you don’t get anything. in fact, getting nothing is what happens 99.99999% of the time when you are a miner.
There are over ~1 million asic miners (specialized devices created to mine btc and other cryptocurrencies) protecting the bitcoin network, and only one asic at a time can earn the block reward. so the odds of a single machine winning are one in a million.
how much bitcoin can you mine in a day?
That’s why the big bitcoin mining farms have so many asics, to improve those odds. Since a new block is produced every 10 minutes (equivalent to 144 blocks per day), a mining farm with ten or twenty thousand miners has a good chance of earning a couple of blocks per 24-hour period.
However, most people don’t have $50 million worth of Bitcoin mining rigs lying around their backyard so winning block rewards are out of the question. That being the case, there is a way to win 1 Bitcoin over time.
how to mine 1 bitcoin over time
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A bitcoin mining pool is a collaborative effort where all the miners in the pool combine their hash power and then split the reward. how this works is that no matter which asic miner in the pool actually earns the block reward, that reward is proportionally divided and distributed to all miners based on the amount of hash power (mining “power” of mining devices like asics) they are contributing.
This is why joining a mining pool is the best way to mine a bitcoin. You won’t get a bitcoin all at once, at least not without a lot of asics, but you can build up bitcoin gradually over time.
for example, with five or ten asics you can mine 0.01 btc a day and then in 100 days you will have mined a full bitcoin. Of course, how long it takes you to mine a bitcoin will depend on a variety of factors.
In particular, how difficult is mining right now? you can check the bitcoin hash rate to determine the difficulty. the higher the hash rate, the more difficult it is to mine (more competition and less profit). however, the hash rate changes frequently as new miners join the network and old ones leave.
How long it takes to mine one Bitcoin can also be affected by something as simple as maintenance. ASICs are typically run 24/7 with no downtime, meaning that they’re prone to failure. To maximize profits you’ll need to have a way to fix your machines and get them running again quickly.
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