The word bitcoin has been around a lot lately, and you have probably been wondering about it. You have probably also head about bitcoin mining.
Heres a guide to bitcoin and bitcoin mining in2019 and of course the very important question, is bitcoin mining still worth it?
Satoshi Nakamoto invented bitcoin as a peer-to-peer electronic cash system. The early days of bitcoin were exploited by the technically informed often garnering outrageous profits. Mining bitcoins was easier then and could be done by a single individual in her bedroom. Now the industry has exploded from a few individuals to a high-level venture; mining bitcoins requires specialized, expensive, machinery.
Here are a few basic definitions.
Block -A group of Bitcoin transactions. They are chosen from the mempool (the list of all currently pending transactions) and recorded by a miner into the ever-growing record of blocks known as “the blockchain.”
Hash – to mine bitcoins miners have to solve a cryptographic puzzle. This needs computational power and miners are rewarded freshly-mined bitcoins.
Hashrate – This is a measure of computational power. With an increase in hashrate, it would seem that more and more bitcoins can be mined, but the difficulty is set such that a block is found roughly every 10 minutes.
Now let’s calculate the profit gained by an American solo miner.
This explains that an average American would make$1348 a year provided bitcoin price is around $1150 and difficulty and hash rate remain constant. But this is not a likely scenario. Bitcoins difficulty and hashrate have been increasing since the early years. In conclusion, the average miner working solo would find it difficult to mine bitcoins unless he has easy access to cheap electricity.
