What is Bitcoin mining?

The job of a miner

Every roughly ten minutes, the Bitcoin network accepts a new block: a batch of confirmed transactions. Miners compete to be the one who publishes it. To do so they repeatedly run a hash function (SHA-256) on a candidate block, changing a number called the nonce, until the result is below a target set by the network.

Finding such a result is pure trial and error, which is why it takes a huge amount of computing power. That cost is what makes rewriting history prohibitively expensive, and it is the core idea of proof of work.

What miners earn

The winning miner collects the block subsidy plus the transaction fees in that block. The subsidy halves about every four years, every 210,000 blocks. Since the April 2024 halving it is 3.125 BTC per block.

Because thousands of miners compete, most join a mining pool and share rewards in proportion to the work they contribute.

What you need to mine

Real mining today is industrial. It relies on specialised machines called ASICs, cheap and reliable electricity, cooling and a fast network connection.

• [+]ASIC miners built only for SHA-256
• [+]Power at a low price per kilowatt-hour
• [+]Cooling: air, water or immersion
• [+]A pool connection and monitoring

Mining in OnlineCryptoMining

OnlineCryptoMining runs Bitcoin mining on real infrastructure: you pick a rig, install cooling, power and network upgrades and follow the telemetry.