Discover what hash rate and hash power is, why it's important to know and how it can help you to mine cryptocurrency.
Discover what hash rate and hash power is, why it's important to know and how it can help you to mine cryptocurrency.
Hash rate (sometimes called the hash power) is the speed at which a cryptocurrency mining device operates.
To be successful at mining, speed is of the essence since the miner is trying to solve a question, add a block the the chain and reap the rewards before anyone else. The more answers suggested over the shortest period of time will increase the chances of solving that block.
A hash function in computer processing is a function that compresses information, meaning the output is generally shorter than the input. Hash functions are used in many parts of cryptography to map data of differing sizes to data of a fixed size.
Cryptographic hash functions are ideal for processing cryptocurrency transactions. They are secure and are widely used in information security applications involving authentication, digital signatures and message authentication codes. In the context of cryptocurrency mining, a hash is one computation or “guess” at solving a block. The hash rate can increase or decrease.
These days it’s impossible to mine Bitcoin using a standard desktop computer. The computational difficulty of mining is too high. When Bitcoin first arrived it was possible to mine using a standard home computer or, more specifically, the computer’s GPU (graphics processing unit).
A GPU is a part of the video rendering system. The work it does is very repetitive and deals with a high volume of information. This kind of bulky mathematical work can be done by a GPU much better and in a much higher volume than the computer’s CPU (central processing unit).
That number is so big we need to talk megas, gigas and teras. These are the hash rates you will see being talked about in the context of cryptocurrency mining.
* kH/s is always written with a lower case k as upper case K is reserved for Kelvin (which is a measurement of heat).
It isn’t hard to see that cryptocurrency mining is becoming progressively more difficult. In the case of Bitcoin, this is deliberate. The difficulty of mining is constantly adjusted to keep the production to a fixed time period.
The more miners attracted to the mining effort then the more difficult it becomes. To be successful at mining requires more hash power to have any chance of sharing the rewards.
To see how much effort and power is required in mining Bitcoin, for example, you should use a hash rate calculator. To use this, you’ll need to know:
In return for inputting this data, you’ll discover how much profit you can make per day, how much Bitcoin you can mine, and how much your power consumption will cost you.
For fun let’s see how long my laptop would take to mine one Bitcoin. From the example above we need to deliver a theoretical 16,500 TH/s for a whole day. We know my laptop has a hash rate of 48 so let’s do the maths. Brace yourself….
Theoretical TH/s for a day to mine one Bitcoin
16,500
TH per minute for a day to mine one Bitcoin
990,000
TH per hour for a day to mine one Bitcoin
59,400,000
TH per day to mine one Bitcoin
1,425,600,000
Total hashes
1,425,600,000,000,000,000,000
Computer hash rate per second
48
Total seconds required to deliver the required hashes
29,700,000,000,000,000,000
Total minutes required to deliver the required hashes
495,000,000,000,000,000
Total hours required to deliver the required hashes
8,250,000,000,000,000
Total days required to deliver the required hashes
343,750,000,000,000
Total years required to deliver the required hashes
941,780,821,918
That’s a long time. But a great illustration of how mining is now only viable with specific mining processors and joining a mining pool if you’re an individual. It also illustrates why professional mining operations in countries with access to lower power costs are contributing most of the mining effort.