As you probably know that Bitcoin network is maintained by
As you probably know that Bitcoin network is maintained by a decentralized web of Bitcoin miners, who use their computational resources to verify blocks and rewarded for their service.
But, how long does it take to mine 1 Bitcoin?
Well, this question has no fixed answer, since there is something called difficulty in mining, which is a dynamic parameter controlling hash power required to mine a bitcoin block.
New bitcoins are generated, roughly, in every 10 minutes, but your ability to earn those newly generated bitcoins is based on how much computational power you have out of computational power on the network.
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So, What Is The Answer Of The Question?
Let’s make a couple of points clear here –
- You can’t mine a “bitcoin.” What you can mine is a block, which is rewarded with 12.5 bitcoins.
- There is a fixed number of 1,800 BTC gained through mining each day, until the block reward goes for cryptocurrency halving in 2021. Those coins can be viewed as being shared by the entire network proportionally to the computing power of each player.
- What most small miners generally do is pooled mining, where you can contribute your computing power to a pool, which does the mining and reward you with a fraction of the mined bitcoin. With this system, it may be possible to earn 1 BTC when you have contributed about 1/25th of the computing power to mine a block. However, that too depends on the pool’s rules and the transaction fees.
- The problem is that Bitcoin difficulty is continually adjusting to keep the average time between two blocks constant at 5 minutes, meaning that the more computing power is dedicated for mining, the more computing power you will require to mine the next blocks. This is what has driven an insane arms race amongst the miners, meaning that it’s now practically impossible to mine anything significant with non-specialized hardware.
- Miners are now using a specialized hardware, ASIC, designed to mine bitcoin. ASIC mining can do nothing but are several order of magnitude faster than general purpose computers for that specific task.
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Conclusion
Mining bitcoin has become a business, in the hands of expert miners who have invested noteworthy amount in infrastructure.
In case you would prefer not to be an expert miner and invest something like a couple of thousands of €$£ in it, then you should better give up mining.
Generally, individuals are in an ideal situation of purchasing Bitcoins and holding them and let the cost acknowledge as opposed to putting that money directly into hardware equipment.
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