Bitcoin network computing power

at present, the computing power of bitcoin in the whole network has reached 2.36 billion hash collisions per second, which is equivalent to the number of water droplets in more than 200000 50 meter long standard swimming pools. But even with such a large amount of computing power, it will take about 10 minutes to hit a hash value that meets the requirements

in 2012, bitcoin's output was halved for the first time, and in July 2016, bitcoin's output was halved for the second time. At present, 12.5 bitcoins are awarded for recording one page of account book. The next halving will take place around 2020, and the total number of bitcoins will not increase by 2040, with a total of 21 million. In other words, the difficulty of digging bitcoin is increasing, while the time required is increasing

Bitcoin bulls often mention that the scarcity value of this cryptocurrency is the main reason for its continued rise. Bitcoin is similar to gold to some extent. The growth of its supply is extremely slow, and it is still slowing down. Its total supply will only reach 21 million

with the increasing interest of institutional investors and retail investors in bitcoin, global exchanges such as the Chicago Board of options (CBOE) have launched bitcoin futures contracts. This is likely to encourage more institutional investors to invest in bitcoin, while at the same time further curbing the price volatility of bitcoin

this much anticipated bitcoin futures trading has been launched on the Chicago Board of options exchange, which represents a significant step in the legalization of cryptocurrency. Futures is a derivative / financial instrument, which can force dealers to buy and sell an asset at a specific time and price

1、 Mining principle

at the beginning, we could dig bitcoin with the computer CPU. The founder of bitcoin, Nakamoto Tsung, g out the world's first creation block with his computer CPU. However, the era of CPU mining has long passed, and now bitcoin mining is the era of ASIC mining and large-scale cluster mining

looking back on the mining history, bitcoin mining has gone through the following five times: CPU mining → GPU mining → FPGA mining → ASIC mining → large-scale cluster mining, The mining speed changes are as follows:

CPU (20mhash / s) → GPU (400mhash / s) → FPGA (25ghash / s) → ASIC (3.5tash / s) → large scale cluster mining (3.5tash / s * x)

mining speed, which is called computing power in professional terms, that is, the ability of computer to generate hash collisions per second. In other words, how many hash collisions can our miner do per second is the calculation force. Computing power is the ability to dig bitcoin. The higher the computing power, the more bitcoin you dig, the higher the return

in the world of bitcoin, a data block is recorded about every 10 minutes. All mining computers are trying to package the data block and submit it, and the person who successfully generates the data block will get a bitcoin reward. Initially, bitcoin rewards of 50 bitcoins could be generated about every 10 minutes. But the payment is halved every four years, and now the bitcoin network can generate 25 bitcoins every 10 minutes

to successfully generate data blocks, miners need to find the effective hash value. To get the correct hash value, there is no shortcut. You can only guess. The process of guessing is the process of computer random hash collision. If you guess correctly, you will get bitcoin

< EM > Figure 3: Mine Map (scale of tens of thousands of mining machines) < / EM >

nowadays, the profit space of small and medium-sized absenteeism who take one mining machine home or deploy a small family workshop (dozens of mining machines) is very limited, and the mining instry is graally concentrating on enterprises and teams with low-cost power resources and professional deployment ability

there are many factors that affect the mining revenue, such as the performance and power consumption of mining machinery, the computing power and difficulty of the whole network, the deployment and operation and maintenance capacity of the mine, the availability of low-cost electricity resources, and the currency price and policy guidance, etc. At present, excellent mining enterprises have the ability of chip research and development, a lot of computing power, professional mine deployment and operation experience, etc. in the future, resources and computing power will be more and more concentrated in these mining enterprises

2. Mine pool

in addition to the above equipment, you also need a necessary tool - mine pool. The function of the mine pool is to gather a large amount of mineral computing power, increase your probability of getting bitcoin, and at the same time, distribute your future bitcoin income to your account in advance

the simple explanation is as follows: now the bitcoin network generates a block every 10 minutes, which contains 25 bitcoins. Suppose there are 1W people in the world participating in mining, then in these 10 minutes, only one lucky person has taken these 25 bitcoins, and the others have nothing. The principle of the mine pool is that everyone mines in teams and distributes according to the agreed distribution method, so that the income of the miners' bitcoin tends to be stable and the risks of the miners are reced. Let's take the most common PPS allocation method as an example. Suppose that your computing power is 10t, and the computing power of the whole mine pool is 100t. Your computing power accounts for 1 / 10 of the total computing power of the mine pool. Suppose that the mine pool can generate 10 bitcoins a day, then you can get 1 bitcoin a day

3. Cloud computing power

in reality, the supply of mining machines often exceeds the demand, and at the same time, the delivery of mining machines needs a long waiting period. Miner installation, commissioning, maintenance and other processes are very complex, which requires a lot of energy. Miners have to enre the noise and heat of miner. For miners, the biggest cost is not these, but the high electricity charges consumed by mining. The profit space of small and medium-sized miners is getting smaller and smaller, even negative

Mining income = generated bitcoin * currency price - mining machinery cost - electricity fee - custody fee

if you are just a small miner, generally you only need to dect mining machinery cost and electricity fee

Mining risks are as follows:

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the mining pool is the necessary infrastructure for the exploitation of P2P cryptography virtual currency such as bitcoin (digital currency). It is generally an open team mining server. Its significance is to improve the stability of bitcoin mining and stabilize the miners' salary. At present, the most powerful mining pools in the world are f2pool, antpool, BW pool, BTCC pool and bitfury. Except for bitfury, the rest are from China