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Author: Admin | 2025-04-28
Messed around on the keyboard for a minute until two zeros showed up. This was exponentially harder than finding a single zero. The chance of finding two zeros in a row is 1 in 162, or a 1 in 256 chance.If more people were to join in the mining and competition for new bitcoin, then eventually three zeros will be required.I just looked up the last real Bitcoin block, which contains the hash of the previous block. The hash was:000000000000000000084d31772619ee08e21b232f755a506bc5d09f3f1a43a1That’s 19 zeros! There’s a 1 in 1619 chance of finding such a block with each attempt. Bitcoin miners do many, many attempts per second, collectively all over the world.The number of attempts per second is known as the “hash rate.” Currently, the estimated world hash rate is just under 200 million terahashes per second ( one terahash is a trillion hashes). With that many attempts per second, a block with a hash starting with 19 zeros is found around every 10 minutes. In the future, as more miners join in, the hash rate will go up, blocks will be found faster, and Bitcoin’s difficulty will adjust to require 20 zeros, which will push block production back down to around 10 minutes.The HalvingWhen Bitcoin first started, 50 bitcoin were produced with every block. The rules of the Bitcoin blockchain specify that after every 210,000 blocks the reward will be cut in half. This moment is known as “the halving,” and happens roughly every four years. The halving, combined with the difficulty adjustment keeping blocks at 10-minute intervals, means that around the year 2140, the block reward will be 0.00000001, or 1 satoshi, the smallest unit of a bitcoin, and can’t be halved anymore. Mining won’t stop, but the block reward will be zero. From that moment, no new bitcoin will be
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