Computation Effort of Bitcoin Mining

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∟Computation Effort of Bitcoin Mining

This section describes what is the computation effort of Bitcoin Mining.

If we want to join the Bitcoin miner army to earn Bitcoins, we need to know what computer resource is needed to do Bitcoin mining.

To estimate the computer resource, we need to know the computer effort of mining a block (building a block).

As we see from the previous section, the main effort is to find a nonce number that produces a SHA256 hash less than or equal to the current blockchain target value.

On average, a miner needs to try 2**72 (as of 2018) nonce numbers and perform 2**72 SHA256 hash operations.

So the biggest effort is to perform 2**72 (about 8*10**21) hashes (SHA256 hash operations). Translating to other units, we have:

8*10**21 Hashes
= 8 ZH (Zetta Hashes)
= 8,000 EH (Exa Hashes)
= 8,000,000 PH (Peta Hashes)
= 8,000,000,000 TH (Tera Hashes) 
= 8,000,000,000,000 GH (Giga Hashes)
= 8,000,000,000,000,000 MH (Mega Hashes)
= 8,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 Hashes

So how long it takes for my laptop computer to perform 8 ZH (Zetta Hashes)? Let's calculate the answer by assuming you have a very high end laptop that can do 4 MH (Mega Hashes) per second. So it will take following time for you to mine one block:

8 ZH / (4 MH /second)
= 8,000,000,000,000,000 MH / (4 MH /second)
= 2,000,000,000,000,000 seconds
= 33,333,333,333,333 minutes
= 555,555,555,556 hours
= 23,148,148,148 days
= 63,419,583 years