How long does it take to mine one bitcoin?

The shortest answer to the question “how long does it take to mine one bitcoin?” is: It depends. But you’re probably not here for the short answer, are you? So let’s break it down for you.

What is Bitcoin mining?

Before getting into how long it takes to mine a single bitcoin, it is important to be clear about how mining works in the first place. Bitcoin mining is the process of bringing new coins into circulation while also getting transactions verified.

The term “mining” is a metaphor of sorts. You know how the work that miners do leads to the discovery of a metal mine, right? Well, miners do the work of lending their computational power to the network and competing with other miners to verify blocks of transactions. The miner who verifies/mines a block successfully earns a crypto reward. Mining is basically this process of creating and earning tokens while helping the network verify transactions.

Miners who successfully verify transactions on the Bitcoin blockchain get to earn rewards for every block they mine. The current block fee for miners is 6.25 BTC (worth ₹85 lakh as of 26 November 2022). One block is mined approximately every 10 minutes.

So is it possible to earn ₹85 lakh every 10 minutes through Bitcoin mining?

In all probability, no.

Why? Because you are likely to run into some hurdles. Consider the following facts to understand what they are:

• Miners use ASICs—sophisticated chips that are specially designed to guess hashes—not regular computers. These powerful machines take an incredible amount of energy to mine a single bitcoin—1,449 kilowatt-hours, to be precise. That’s the same amount of energy an average household consumes in approximately 13 years. Environmental concerns apart, the long-term viability of Bitcoin mining is uncertain due to the costs involved. Retail miners find it rather unaffordable.
• Secondly, miners compete amongst themselves to mine a block of transactions and add it to the chain. The computer that cracks the code the fastest is rewarded with the coins—not everyone. So a vast majority of miners pool their computing resources together to generate as much power as possible. It would be close to impossible for individual miners to compete against them.

Take the example of F2Pool. This pool is responsible for mining almost 20% of all BTC, making its hash rate share the largest. That’s an average of 180 BTC (worth approximately ₹24.3 crores as of 26 November 2022) mined per day.

So, no, as an individual miner, it is very unlikely that you will be able to mine 1 BTC, even occasionally.

How to mine Bitcoin

Now that it is clear what Bitcoin mining is let’s see how you could get into mining. To begin mining, you essentially need to set up a computer. But this computer is nothing like your regular personal computer. Here are things you could do to look into the possibility of mining:

• First, gather your tools and consider costs. Your tools should include mining software, a powerful computer, and a wallet. You will also need a power backup and a cooling system if you are in India. For software, you could look at some well-known options such as CG Miner, Awesome Miner, and Multiminer. The computer would need to have integrated GPUs to make guessing hashes more efficient. You will also need multiple graphics cards.
• Each ASIC miner will need access to a 220V outlet. Ensure that you have arranged for this in advance. Never overload the circuit.
• Consider joining a mining pool to boost your chances of success. Mining pools like F2Pool mine 180 BTC a day.

How long does it take to mine one bitcoin?

It takes close to 10 minutes to mine one block of Bitcoin. That means every 10 minutes, a new set of 6.25 BTC is brought into the world. This time doesn’t change very often. When more computing power is used to mine bitcoin faster, the programme, in turn, increases the mining difficulty, so the code is harder to crack. Meaning the time taken is up again.

So, as things stand, you can’t technically mine exactly one BTC unless you’re part of a pool that rewards you with that amount as part of your contribution. In any case, as we’ve mentioned before, regular people, even with above-average computers, could go decades before discovering a block of their own.

There, you have your answer. With that, we leave you to decide whether mining is for you. Adios!

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