What is Cryptocurrency Mining? How Does it Work?

Over time, the value of the cryptocurrency has grown to the resemblance of gold. Lately, there has been so much interest in cryptocurrencies that the fastest growing Bitcoin hit $43,394.80 on the exchange market. 

The rapid growth of bitcoin, followed by other cryptocurrencies such as Ethereum, indicates good tidings for cryptocurrency investors. The future of crypto is promising, proving to be a rewarding venture for anybody who wants to get started with it. You can always trade and transact on platforms like this trading system.

If you are interested in crypto and feel like giving it a shot, you must wonder how it all works. However, let’s first go through the whole process from mining to processing transactions in crypto. 

What is cryptocurrency mining?

Crypto mining functions by creating new bitcoins by evaluating extremely complex cryptographic hash puzzles that, in return, verify and validate the transactions in the currency. Upon successfully mining a bitcoin, the miner receives a specified amount of bitcoin, and the process repeats for further transactions.

The growth of Bitcoin has swept the world. The bitcoin trading software is well-known for automatically exchanging cryptocurrencies with other traders to take advantage of changes in the value of currencies. Investors can keep an eye on prices and trade currencies quickly.

Bitcoin, the fastest growing cryptocurrency, has gained popularity all over the globe due to its wild value fluctuations and increasing prices since the time it was first created. The rising costs of bitcoin, followed by Ethereum and other cryptocurrencies, have forced more and more people to pick an interest in the process of mining. 

However, mining still appears to be a complex process to many. Here are the three main requirements for mining: 

Wallet

Wallets are a sort of storage space for all your crypto funds and mining efforts. It’s an encrypted online account that allows storage, transfer, and transactions of various cryptocurrencies. Notable companies like Trezor and Exodus offer wallet options.

Mining software

Many different companies make mining software, and many of them are free to download and can run on both Windows and Mac computers. You can mine Bitcoin once the software is linked to the proper hardware.

Computer equipment

Hardware is the part of Bitcoin mining that is the most expensive. To mine Bitcoin successfully, you’ll need a powerful computer that uses a lot of electricity. It’s not unusual for the hardware cost to be $10,000 or more.

How does crypto mining work?

Once all the requirements mentioned above are fulfilled, the mining process starts autonomously, and a transaction is initiated. The initiation of transaction in the crypto network involves three elements

1. A transaction input
2. A transaction output
3. The transaction amounts

For each transaction input, the mining software establishes a complex and unique cryptographic hash puzzle that is difficult to decode. The software then groups the transactions to produce a block into a Merkle tree. 

Miners must figure out the hash puzzle by finding the hash lower than a given target. This is called the difficulty requirement. A target is a 67-digit number that is stored in the header. The number of miners competing to solve a hash function will determine how hard it is to mine.

It’s important to know that this difficulty changes after every 2016 block is made. It depends on how long it took miners to solve an equation in the previous 2016 blocks. This also helps keep the rate at which transactions are added to the blockchain at 10 minutes per transaction.

Miners will try to figure out how to solve the hash puzzle by adding a nonce to the block header repeatedly until the hash value they get is less than the target. Once a mining computer figures out how to solve the puzzle, a new block is created.

Once all the nodes agree on this block is validated in the Bitcoin network. When a block is validated, the transactions it contains are checked, and the block is added to the chain. As was said above, this happens every 10 minutes.

As many miners will be trying to solve the puzzle simultaneously, the first miner to get the correct hash value is rewarded in Bitcoin. Through this process, more Bitcoins can be put into circulation.