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In 2009it was 50. In 2013, it had been 25, in the time of writing it's 12.5, and sometime in the middle of 2020 it will halve to 6.25. .
At this speed of halving, the total number of bitcoin in circulation will approach a limit of 21 million, making the currency more scarce and valuable over time but also more expensive for miners to make.
Here's the catch. In order to get bitcoin miners to actually earn bitcoin from verifying transactions, two things have to occur. First, they must confirm 1 megabyte (MB) worth of transactions, which can theoretically be as small as 1 transaction but are more often a few thousand, depending on how much data each transaction shops.
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Second, in order to add a block of transactions to the blockchain, miners must fix a intricate computational science difficulty, also called a"proof of work." What they are actually doing is trying to come up with a 64-digit hexadecimal number, known as a"hash," that is less than or equivalent to the hash.
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In other words, it is a gamble. .
The difficulty level of the most recent block at the time of writing is about 7,184,404,942,701. In other words, the chance of a computer producing a hash below the target is just 1 in 7,184,404,942,701 less than 1 in seven trillion. That level is corrected every 2016 blocks, or roughly every two weeks, with the goal of keeping rates of mining constant.
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The reverse is also correct. If computational power is taken from this network, the difficulty adjusts downward to make mining easier. .
"Let us say I'm thinking of the number 19. If Friend A guesses 21, they shed because 21>19. If Friend B guesses 16 and Friend C supposes 12, then they have both theoretically arrived at workable answers, since 16<19 and 12<19. There's no'extra Source credit' for Friend B, even though B's answer was closer to the goal answer of 19. .
"Now imagine that I pose the'guess what number I'm thinking of' question, but I am not asking just three friends, and I'm not thinking of a number between 1 and 100. Instead, I am asking millions of prospective miners and I'm thinking of a 64-digit hexadecimal number. Now you see that it is going to be extremely hard to guess the right answer." .
If 1 in seven trillion doesn't sound difficult enough as is, here's the grab to the grab. Not only do bitcoin miners need to come up with the right hash, but they also have to be the very first to perform it.
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These can run from $500 to the tens of thousands. .
Today, bitcoin mining is so aggressive that it can only be done profitably using all the latest up-to-date ASICs. When using desktop computers, GPUs, or older models of ASICs, the expense of energy consumption actually surpasses the revenue generated. Even with the newest unit at your disposal, one computer is rarely enough to compete with exactly what miners call"mining pools" .
A mining pool is a group of miners who combine their computing power and split the mined bitcoin between participants. A disproportionately high number of blocks are mined by pools rather than by individual miners. In July 2017, mining pools and companies represented approximately 80% to 90 percent of bitcoin computing power. .
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Between 1 in 7 trillion chances, scaling difficulty levels, and the massive network of consumers verifying transactions, one block of transactions is verified roughly every 10 minutes. However, its important to keep in mind that 10 minutes is a target, not a rule.
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The bitcoin network can process about seven transactions per second, with transactions being logged in the blockchain each 10 minutes. As the network of bitcoin users continues to grow, but the number of transactions made in 10 minutes will eventually exceed the number of transactions which can be processed in 10 minutes.