How Bitcoin Mining Works?

New Bitcoin are created in a process known as “mining”. By Bitcoin mining, the “miners” are rewarded to help keep the Bitcoin network running smoothly by verifying transactions from one Bitcoin wallet to another. You probably already know all of that, but how long would it take you to mine a whole Bitcoin?

The answer to that question is and isn’t simple. You could receive a dozen Bitcoin all at once for just 10 minutes of mining, but unless you’ve invested in a large scale mining rig, that’s very unlikely. The Bitcoin protocol does it’s best to ensure that Bitcoin is only produced every 10 minutes, using what’s known as “mining difficulty”. The more computing power that gets put into the network, the more difficult it becomes to solve the algorithm and create the next block to receive the reward for doing so.

To the victor go the spoils, and if you’re only running a few miners, you may have better luck receiving anything at all by joining a Bitcoin mining pool. These mining pools gather computing power from users all around the world into one source, then when the pool successfully mines a block, the rewards are distributed out to pool members, usually based on how much power they put toward the total.

Bitcoin Mining Hardware Requirements?

How fast you can mine an entire Bitcoin is completely dependent on the hardware your mining with. If you’ve put together a heavy duty mining rig, you may be able to mine blocks yourself and receive rewards incredibly quickly. If not, the fractions of Bitcoin you earn will stack up over time, again dependent on the power of your rig. To learn more about Bitcoin mining hardware read our blog post, [Best Bitcoin Mining Hardware For 2019?].

Currently, so long as the constantly adjusting mining difficulty keeps coin production steady, there are 12.5 Bitcoin created every 10 minutes. That’s 75 every hour, and 1800 per day. At the time of writing, that’s just over $6 Million worth of Bitcoin being created every day! There is a mechanism in play, though, by which the reward for mining a block is cut in half for every 210,000 blocks mined, or roughly every four years. Around the middle of 2020, when the next “halving” occurs, the block reward will drop to 6.25 Bitcoin. [Click here to view the BTC difficulty chart]

So doing the math, counting on the number of Bitcoin generated every day to steadily decrease, the very last Bitcoin should be mined right around the year 2140. That gives us all plenty of time to get our Bitcoin mining rigs together. Remember, though, it’s going to be incredibly difficult to mine those last few coins, so get out there and strike while the iron’s hot!

Newsletter!

Join our weekly newsletter for the freshest Cryptocurrency, Bitcoin Mining and Blockchain news!