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The Bitcoin is an example of a scarce digital asset, since the maximum number of units that can be produced, is 21.000.000 and considering that for every 210.000 new blocks created on the network 50 BTC are generated. The generation of these units occurs through a process called mining.
This process is so complex that it can be compared to the process of the gold, and that’s why it’s called mining. Besides the function of generating coins, the mining is also a way of validating the transactions in the Blockchain and to guarantee the safety of the platform. But how does it works anyways?
Keep reading to find out how Bitcoin is mined.
Understanding Bitcoin’s network
To understand the mining process is necessary to remind that the Bitcoin is a democratic coin, in other words, anyone with access to the internet can use the Bitcoin and become a node inside the platform. These nodes can be divided into partials, the ones who help in the trades, and full nodes. The full nodes are the miners, the responsible for validating the trades on the Blockchain through proof-of-work and are also responsible for generating new Bitcoins.
The BTC’s mining system is organized and controlled through specific softwares that insert the user to the nodes network, in other words, to start mining the user needs to download them and get integrated to a network interlinked with another nodes in Bitcoin’s network.
Mining
Mining Bitcoins is a process that involves a lot of energy and a computer with high processing capacity. That’s because computers need to be connected 24 hours a day to confirm and audit transactions, after all it is mining that ensures that the network is sustainable.
In general miners buy machines developed specifically to mine Bitcoin, such as ASICS (Integrated Circuits of Specific Application). The role of these machines is to find a mathematical function called a hash function, which makes a block of BTC transactions compatible with the previous block. This function is found through proof-of-work in which the computer needs to perform thousands of calculations per second to find the combination.
Mining becomes a kind of competition, as the first miners who find the compatible sequence receive a reward in satoshis for each block mined. The detail, however, is that miners have a maximum of 10 minutes to solve mathematical problems, as this is the time that the system takes to create a new block of transactions.
If time is running out and there is no resolution, the system itself reduces the difficulty of mathematical problems so that the transaction can be validated.
Once the process is finished and the hash is found, the transaction is then validated and registered on the Blockchain and the miner (s) receives the reward.
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