Book Image

Bitcoin Essentials

By : Albert Szmigielski
Book Image

Bitcoin Essentials

By: Albert Szmigielski

Overview of this book

Blockchain is being billed as the technology of the future. Bitcoin is the first application of that technology. Mining is what makes it all possible. Exploring mining from a practical perspective will help you make informed decisions about your mining setup. Understanding what the future may hold for blockchains, and therefore for mining, will help you position yourself to take advantage of the impending changes. This practical guide starts with an introduction to Bitcoin wallets, as well as mining hardware and software. You will move on to learn about different mining techniques using the CPU, GPU, FPGA, and ultimately the ASIC as an example. After this, you will gain an insight into solo mining and pool mining, and see the differences between the two. The book will then walk you through large-scale mining and the challenges faced during such operations. Finally, you will take a look into the future to see a world where blockchain-based applications are commonplace and mining is ubiquitous.
Table of Contents (15 chapters)
Bitcoin Essentials
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewer
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Chapter 2. CPU Mining

In this chapter, we will take a look at some actual mining. We will examine mining as it first started when Bitcoin was released. In those early days, the only way to mine was using the Central Processing Unit (CPU) on your computer and the Bitcoin Core wallet. We will explore mining with a Bitcoin wallet. Once you start mining, you can't help but feel as if you've been transported back to 2009 when Bitcoin was known to only a small group of enthusiasts. As time went by, multi-threaded software was written to take advantage of multiple cores of a CPU.

We will delve into the following topics in this chapter:

  • CPU mining with Bitcoin Core

  • CPU mining software

  • Pros and cons of CPU mining

  • Best practices when mining with CPUs

  • Profitability of CPU mining

Note

In this chapter, we are using Ubuntu Linux and all the examples are for that OS.