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

Profitability of mining


As we have mentioned earlier, the Bitcoin network hash rate is really high now. Mining with a CPU is no longer guaranteed to bring in profits. This is due to the fact that, during the mining process, you are competing with other miners to try to solve a block. You will be at a disadvantage if those other miners are running faster hardware, as your hardware can only make a certain amount of guesses (hashes) in a given time frame.

To compare the mining speed of a few CPU's, look at the following table:

CPU

Mining speed (KH/s)

Power used (Watts)

# of cores

Athlon 64 X2 5600+

6.07

89

2

Athlon II X3 425

9.5

125

4

Phenom II X4 955

22

125

4

FX-8120

46

125

8

FX-8350

65

125

8

Core 2 Quad Q6600

9.68

100

4

Core 2 Quad Q9550

32.2

125

4

Core i3-2130

23

65

4

Core i5-2500K

48

90

4

Core i5-3570K

55

90

4

Core i7-3930K

98

200

12

Table. 2.1: Comparison of mining speed of CPUs

As you can see, CPU's do not hash very fast. The fastest in our...