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Bitcoin => Bitcoin Discussion => Topic started by: amg7468 on February 08, 2018, 03:16:23 PM



Title: Mining question - Zero option
Post by: amg7468 on February 08, 2018, 03:16:23 PM
As I understand it to successfully mine a block you have to be the first miner to solve the hash problem, then you get the block reward; and the hash problem is not so much an enormous computation, more like an enormous guessing game to guess the right 64 bit hexadecimal hash value. Only I read somewhere that to succeed you don't need to guess the exact value, just a value that is LESS THAN OR EQUAL TO the blocks' hash value. You can see from the blockchain that each successful block has had millions of attempts to guess a valid answer before being successfully mined.
I obviously must be missing the point somewhere, but instead of spending heaps of electricity on massive computer processing power, why not just guess zero every time. Zero will always be less than or equal to the hash value, and you would have a valid answer first time every time and win every block!