More and more investors in the real economy are beginning to look favorably on investments in virtual currencies, which has pushed up the price of many of them.
With this phenomenon, the main players in the cryptocurrency market begin to be visible and bitcoin mining is striking. Who are the miners? What is your homework? In this article we are going to know a bit more deeply about bitcoin mining and its functions.What is bitcoin mining?We do not intend to bore our readers with extensive technical explanations of what is known as bitcoin mining, which becomes complex even for computer specialists. But, “mining” is nothing other than creating bitcoins through a powerful network of computers of enormous capacity.Then, the bitcoin miners are the specialists in creating, maintaining and guaranteeing the security of all the operations that are carried out in cryptocurrencies.
This is done through an extensive network of computers, capable of supporting complex mathematical operations. It is necessary to clarify that bitcoin mining is associated with exchange houses that operate with virtual currencies. An important part of its benefits comes from mining bitcoins.Unlike traditional currencies, whose control, issuance and regulation correspond to each central bank of the country of origin of that currency, virtual currencies lack – and with that idea were created – a centralizing body.The bitcoin network, which nests in all the aforementioned computers, acts like a ledger in permanent expansion, registering each operation that is carried out with virtual currencies. The bitcoin mining, therefore, has the task of validating all the transactions that are made with cryptocurrencies.How does bitcoin mining work?Surely we have heard that every transaction in Bitcoins has a delay of ten minutes in validation.
We see why.Every ten minutes, those huge computers that form the bitcoin network, collect hundreds of pending cryptocurrency transactions. This set of pending transactions are called “block”. The computers in the network make this block an intricate mathematical algorithm.
The bitcoin mining begins to work on that block and the first miner who deciphers that mathematical puzzle, he makes it known to the rest of the miners of the network. If most of the miners give their approval to the resolution of the algorithm, that block of transactions is added to the ledger and, automatically, the bitcoin mining goes to the next block of transactions. Hence the name “block chain” or blockchain.Let’s see something interesting. The miner who manages to decipher a block and this is added to the ledger, receives as a reward 25 bitcoins – remember that each bitcoin has a price close to 3 thousand dollars -.
Of course, those 25 bitcoins will be added to the miner’s purse when he has added another 99 blocks to the ledger.The complex task of bitcoin mining is to prevent a bitcoin from being spent more than once, reduce the risk of hacking the block chain and maintain a network that, according to some calculations, is 13 thousand times more powerful, in terms of energy consumption. , that the 500 largest computers in the world.Risks of bitcoin miningThe enormous rewards that mean to unravel the mathematical algorithm of a block have led to the formation of miners’ pools in order to capture and solve the largest number of blocks.For now, bitcoin mining, looks and intervenes in the huge business that develops around virtual currencies and nobody wants to stay out.
