what is mining?

[lala7]

what is mining? i am new to bitcoin. Do I need to do it to get paid through bitcoin? I am not all that computer savvy. thanks

[Possum577]

Hi, welcome to Bitcoin and this Forum!

Great question, there's a lot of information here and on the web about mining, but I can give you some starter information.

Mining is how new bitcoins are generated. You don't need to mine bitcoin to get paid in bitcoin. Once the bitcoins are mined they are available to the entire economy, to be passed around in exchange for goods and services (just as paper currency is after it is minted/created).

Mining bitcoin has become very expensive to generate even minor amounts of full coins due to the size of the economy that exists today. This was intended...the more that are mined the harder it becomes to mine more. Additionally, every few years the amount of bitcoin released in a "package" that's mined gets cut in half. Currently a package of bitcoin is 25 bitcoins, soon (predicted to be the start of 2016) that package will be halved to 12.5. The trigger is the number of bitcoins mined so no one knows for sure when it will occur.

The decision on whether one wants to mine bitcoin comes down to how much the have to invest and how much time they are willing to mine before obtaining a return on their investment. There are huge operations in China that are mining significant amounts...but there is a lot of money invested and electricity costs are CHEAP in China.

I'm happy to answer more questions (as are many others on this Forum), here are some other resources...

Bitcoin Wiki on Mining: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin#Mining

Bitcoin Mining: https://www.bitcoinmining.com/

Mining Board on this forum: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=14.0

[lahm-44]

mining is a very important part of the bitcoin economy..in simpke workds mining is solving huge math problems which are generally called blocks...miners use a specific software to solve those maths which are called mining software and they get some coins in exchange and even miners are required to approve the bitcoin transactions

[ranochigo]

what is mining? i am new to bitcoin. Do I need to do it to get paid through bitcoin? I am not all that computer savvy. thanks

Mining is basically a process that rewards miners for verifying transactions to prevent against double spending. Bitcoin mining is just like a lottery, the more hash you can calculate per second, the more probability you have to win the lottery. It is possible to calculate manually but it would be much much slower to generate even 1 satoshi in a year. CPU mining is slower than GPU and GPU is slower than ASIC. ASIC or Application Specifc Integrated  Chips are chips designed to calculate SHA256 hashes and mine Bitcoins. It is not viable to mine using GPU and CPU. Your profit would be small if you operate in a small scale ASIC farm with low electrical bill. Block generation serves to help to keep the total market cap near to 21 million BTC by halving the amount of coins per 4 years till it becomes 0. When that happens, the mining revenue would be coming from transaction fees completely.

Bitcoin mining is not the only way you can earn Bitcoins. You can also get Bitcoins by buying them from an exchange or selling goods. Alternatively, you can also do work for Bitcoin, for example participating in a signature campaign on the forum.

[kama]

basically that is:
you add a number to the block that waiting to be added to blockchain from starting 0 so how do you add is this 0 1 2 3 4 5 ........... after the integration of every number to the block you take the hash(sha256)of the block if your hash is below the network's target you win the 25 btc if above you're not.Output of sha256 and the target number is hexadecimal

[LiteCoinGuy]

what is mining? i am new to bitcoin. Do I need to do it to get paid through bitcoin? I am not all that computer savvy. thanks

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2cMjR0mB9Sc

[crairezx20]

what is mining? i am new to bitcoin. Do I need to do it to get paid through bitcoin? I am not all that computer savvy. thanks

Mining means is the process or industry of obtaining coal or other minerals from a mine.
Mining bitcoin is to obtain bitcoins or generates bitcoin from mine....but before you do mining you need the asic miner or any hardware miner and generates bitcoins....

[TinEye]

mining is the way the miners secure the network, through a reward called a block, and they get this block because they are securing the network, joining now would be useless
mining activity, is done by big farm with many many asic device, and what they get is a tiny portion of the block, so unless you have a very competitive electricity and a big farm you can't mine at all for profit

[ranochigo]

mining is the way the miners secure the network, through a reward called a block, and they get this block because they are securing the network, joining now would be useless
mining activity, is done by big farm with many many asic device, and what they get is a tiny portion of the block, so unless you have a very competitive electricity and a big farm you can't mine at all for profit

It would depend largely on several factors. Including space, price volatility, hardware costs and electrical fees. If someone has low electrical fees, they would have a higher chance of profiting if they buy a used ASIC. For big mining farms, they are looking for a bigger combined profit.

[giustone]

Hello,

You can use a profitability calculator to find the best profitablity altcoins.
You can use coinwarz,on this site you can find more calculator (sha256,scrypt and many others.)
I hope I helped you!

[maokoto]

what is mining? i am new to bitcoin. Do I need to do it to get paid through bitcoin? I am not all that computer savvy. thanks

Mining is a process to generate more Bitcoin. Mainly, it includes a computer or hardware doing math calculations to "find" the new Bitcoins. You do not need to mine to earn or spend Bitcoins.

[notlist3d]

what is mining? i am new to bitcoin. Do I need to do it to get paid through bitcoin? I am not all that computer savvy. thanks

Mining is a process to generate more Bitcoin. Mainly, it includes a computer or hardware doing math calculations to "find" the new Bitcoins. You do not need to mine to earn or spend Bitcoins.

At this point it is really asics  or hardware doing BTC mining.  Suggesting you can use a computer is misleading.  A computer will lose money mining CPU/GPU on BTC.

So in most cases it takes a investment to get an asic.  If you did computer CPU/GPU it will be for learning as you lose money mining btc with it. 1-2 2 year old usb stick miners will do more then most GPU's with high insensitivity on mining.

[ranochigo]

Hello,

You can use a profitability calculator to find the best profitablity altcoins.
You can use coinwarz,on this site you can find more calculator (sha256,scrypt and many others.)
I hope I helped you!

Just to highlight a few risk. Altcoins are considered as relatively violatile and they can lose value very soon. Mining for them is quite risky. Do note that several algorithm has ASICs designed for them while various others are ASIC resistant for now. You can try mining stable alt coins which are ASIC resistant to gain slightly more profit than Bitcoin.

[Blawpaw]

For most users of cryptocurrencies it is not necessary to understand how the mining process in itself works, but it is fundamentally important to understand that there is a mining process to create the virtual currency. Unlike currencies as we know them today where governments and banks can simply choose to print unlimited amounts (Not saying they do so, just a point), cryptocurrencies has to be mined by users using a mining program that solves sophisticated algorithms in order to release blocks of coins that can go into circulation.

This is part that makes the cryptocurrencies unique, as there is nobody who can simply press a button and get unlimited coins. Everybody can compete equally while mining coins, by buying the same equipment as one another.  The different cryptocurrencies uses different types of algorithms in order for the blocks to be released, but in general it is not something that you should be using your computer to do as it takes specific equipment to mine and it will provide you with a huge electricity bill compared to the profits you will be able to make from it. It is also worth noting that the more coins that has been mined from a cryptocurrency, the more difficult it gets to release new blocks and thus get new coins. The algorithms has been made this way, to ensure that all the coins would not be mined instantly and leave room for the currency to stabilize and not be over populated from the beginning, thus not having any significant value for anyone besides the miners.

Cryptocurrencies have a limited amount of coins that can be mined and once they have all been mined, there will be no more of them being created as it is virtually impossible. This means that when all 21 million Bitcoins has been mined, they will be the only coins in circulation forever and no further Bitcoins will be added to the system. Same goes for all other cryptocurrencies, which is why many people see them as a good alternative to the currencies we have today that is based on nothing but goodwill between countries in order to ensure the value of the currency doesn't fluctuate.