Abstract
This chapter is mainly concerned with outlining the process of cryptocurrency mining. There are dozens of altcoins which you could mine; however, Bitcoin by far is the most popular choice for cryptocurrency miners. This is primarily due to the advancement in technology concerning the hardware and software used to mine cryptocurrencies. Specialized hardware and software are now being designed for the sole purpose of mining Bitcoin. Miners have a variety of hardware and software to choose from depending on their mining strategy. This chapter introduces the basic concept of mining, its essential functions, the hardware and software required for mining, different methods of mining and the factors influencing mining.
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Notes
- 1.
The BTC reward halves every 210,000 blocks, on the 23rd of May 2020, the reward will decrease to 6.25 BTC.
- 2.
The assumptions were borrowed from—https://bitcoinwisdom.com/bitcoin/difficulty
- 3.
The data to create the chart was borrowed from—https://www.blockchain.com/en/pools
- 4.
Versions later than 3.7.2, i.e., v3.8.0 and forthcoming updates (launched—November 2013) do not support GPU mining.
- 5.
The index is available at—https://powercompare.co.uk/Bitcoin/
- 6.
Computation was done using the calculator available at https://www.buybitcoinworldwide.com/mining/hardware/
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Gandotra, V., Racicot, FÉ., Rahimzadeh, A. (2019). Cryptocurrency Mining. In: Goutte, S., Guesmi, K., Saadi, S. (eds) Cryptofinance and Mechanisms of Exchange. Contributions to Management Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-30738-7_3
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