How to make money with Bitcoin Miners

Mining is the process by Bitcoin transactions are secured. For this purpose the miners carry out mathematical calculations for their Bitcoin network with their computer equipment. As a reward for their services, they collect the newly created bitcoins as well as transaction fees confirm. Currently this reward is 12.5 bitcoins per block. It is halved every four years. Miners (or miners’ cooperatives) compete and their incomes are proportional to the computing power deployed. “To describe the mining, using the example of a gigantic sudoku contest where the participants start a new grid as soon as someone finds a solution and not the difficulty adjusts so that on average a grid Resolved every ten minutes. Imagine a giant grid of sudoku, with several thousand lines and columns. It is fairly easy to check a completed grid is full. But […] it will take a lot of work for the ending! The difficulty of the grids can be adjusted by changing their sizes […], but they are always new and verified easily even if they are very large. The puzzles to be solved in the bitcoin network are based on cryptographic hashes and have the same characteristics as these sudoku grids: they are very difficult to solve but it is very easy to check a solution is good and its difficult can be Adjusted. – Andreas M. Antonopoulos.

What do Miners calculate?

The miners perform cryptographic hashes (two successive SHA256) on what is called a block header. For each new hash, the mining software uses a different random number called the nonce. Depending on the contents of the block and the value of the nuncio, the hash produced will look like this:

93ef6f358fbb998c60802496863052290d4c63735b7fe5bdaac821de96a53a9a

This hash can be converted into a very long number. (This is a hexadecimal number, which means that the letters A-F are the numbers 10-15). In order to make mining difficult, there is what is called the target difficulty. In order to create a valid block, a Miner must find a hash that is less than the target difficulty. For example, if the difficulty is:

1000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000

Any number starting with a zero would be accepted and considered lower than the target. Example:

0787a6fd6e0782f7f8058fbef45f5c17fe89086ad4e78a1520d06505acb4522f

If we lower the target to:

0100000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000

We now need a number beginning with two zeros:

00db27957bd0ba06a5af9e6c81226d74312a7028cf9a08fa125e49f15cae4979

Because the target is a bulky number with many digits, a simpler number is usually used to express the current target. This number is called the mining difficulty. The mining difficulty is calibrated on the first block created. This means that a difficulty of 70000 means 70000 times more computational power than it took Satoshi Nakamoto to generate the first block, when he was the only Miner and he was using only the CPU of a computer, a computer.

The difficulty changes every 2016 blocks. The network adjusts the difficulty so that the generation time of these 2016 blocks is 14 days, regardless of the computing power deployed. This is why the difficulty increases with the power of the network.

How to mine bitcoins?

Bitcoins mining is no longer a profitable business for individuals. The popularity of Bitcoin has generated a huge competition that makes it inaccessible. Only some industrial sites are still able to benefit from this activity. Before venturing into this adventure, we invite you to read Greg Ryder’s testimony (old) or that of Ouriel Benaroch and to visit the mining space on the Bitcointalk forum.

Let us note in passing the existence of companies that practice cloud mining and sell calculation capacity to their clients who receive in exchange the fractions of mined bitcoins, after deduction of management fees. Beware however, some services are often very disappointing, when it is not simply pure scams. In general, even when practiced seriously, “cloud mining” is rarely profitable. Let us welcome all the same the approach of just-mining.com which starts a mining solution with the concern to distribute the profits equitably between the client and the manager.

If you want to activate the network, you want to use the GUIminer software by following these steps.

If you want to undermine somewhat more accessible “crypto-currencies” you can use Minergate * software keeping in mind that profitability is very uncertain.

In general, mining of crypto-currencies is advisable in France only to persons who have their own generator of green electricity (solar, wind, geothermal, hydraulic) for domestic purposes without having the Possibility of reselling surplus production on the public network.