MMORPG fans are no strangers to mining. As it turns out, some online mining and grinding can be more valuable than others; enter Bitcoin. In the traditional financial system, the bank is the authority on updating transactions into a ledger. Bitcoin also has a mechanism by which the network can verify transactions, bypassing the bank and making the system completely decentralized. Bitcoin achieves this using miners.
Miners
Anyone can start Bitcoin mining using its peer to peer network and maintain its blockchain: an online ledger containing historical transaction data. Every time a transaction occurs on the bitcoin network, miners compete to compile them in blocks. These blocks are then sent out to the network, where other miners verify their data. Once verified, they can be linked with the existing ledger via hash functions and receive bitcoins as remuneration based on the transaction. The hash functions give out a unique identifier of the blockchain that changes if somebody corrupts the data in any block. Any changes in the ledger data are identified and the block fixed, making it virtually impossible to corrupt the ledger.
Additionally, miners are also responsible for generating new bitcoins to the network. They solve complex cryptographic puzzles, virtually a guessing game to generate hashes that conflict with existing hashes on the blockchain. If a conflict is found, they receive new bitcoins, increasing the ones in circulation. Once you start mining bitcoin, you can go to btc profit site to trade bitcoins easily.
Complexity
The system is designed so that the complexity in solving the puzzles increases depending on the number of miners on the bitcoin network. This is to prevent a sudden influx of bitcoins in circulation; otherwise the price of bitcoin will inflate. Ensuring complexity, a new bitcoin comes into circulation every 10 mins, but the maximum number of bitcoins in circulation will cap at 21 million. From there on, miners will only be responsible for maintaining the blockchain.
The mining process is done via a combination of hardware and software. The likelihood of discovering conflicting hashes increases if your computer can perform faster calculations; however, since this is a guessing game, anyone can find them. Here are some ways you can mine Bitcoins.
PC mining
The first thing you’re going to need to do is to join a Bitcoin mining pool online to download the software they provide. Here, different miners join their computational power together over the internet and let the program run in the background. The more computational power you have in your pool, the more bitcoins you’ll be able to mine.
When bitcoin started, this was the only way to mine bitcoins as there were not enough of them on the blockchain. With an increase in more powerful computing machines, this method is no longer feasible in mining bitcoins as you might not cover operational costs.
GPU mining
Like mining Bitcoin with your PC’s internal processing power via its central processing unit (CPU), you can also use its internal Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) to increase the computational power. Depending on the GPU’s you get, you can significantly increase the computational mining rate.
Additionally, you can get an aftermarket GPU rig where you can attach multiple GPU’s to it and further increase your PC’s computational power. The rest of the process is the same as mining with a PC.
ASIC
ASICs or application-specific integrated circuits are custom-made for bitcoin mining algorithms. These machines have the most computational power out of all the hardware required to mine, and many bitcoin farms use them to generate immense amounts of bitcoin. These devices are also very power-hungry, require cooling, and are very noisy, hence can’t be used in a home setting. All they need is an internet connection via a router to be easily set up with a mining pool.
