Stopping Bitcoin

[Lexington]

Is there any loss of time or effort when you shut down coin generation?  Or, does it just pick up where you left off the next time that you start it?  Just curious.

[theymos]

There is no "progress", so there is no loss. For every hash that you calculate (you might calculate millions of these per second), there's a small chance of solving a block. Each hash is like an entry into a lottery. Each hash is independent of the others, so nothing needs to be saved.

[Lexington]

I see, thank you for the explination.

So the calulators that I see are just calculating odds then.  I take it you could solve a block in your first 5 minutes if you were lucky enough.  Or if unlucky then you might not solve one all month.

[theymos]

So the calulators that I see are just calculating odds then.  I take it you could solve a block in your first 5 minutes if you were lucky enough.  Or if unlucky then you might not solve one all month.

That's right. The calculators look at the current odds per hash (this changes from time to time), and from that calculate the average number of hashes it takes to solve a block. Then you can figure out the average time to solve a block based on your hash rate.