>"Currently, a successful hash must start with approximately 17 zeros, so only one out of 1.4 x 10^20 hashes will be successful." Can someone elaborate on the math here? How do we get to 1 in 1.4 x 10^20 ?
It's probably 17 hexadecimal zeros.
Mining Bitcoin with pencil and paper: 0.67 hashes per day (2014)
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Re: Mining Bitcoin with pencil and paper: 0.67 hashes per day (2014)
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
To be able to mine at all (with whatever speed), you need to be able to complete an individual hash operation in less than 10 minutes - before the next Bitcoin block is created elsewhere on the network - because you have to base your calculation on that previous block's hash. If it takes more than a day to compute one hash, it does not work, no matter how many of them you could theoretically do in parallel.
10 minutes is the average time between the creation of the two blocks, so the time could be much greater. Block 74638 was mined almost 7 hours after the previous one, for example, because of a serious overflowing issue. Of course, the combinaison of "no block created in 36 hours" & "the hand-calculated block is valid" is highly unlikely, but still possible.
The network adjusted difficulty aims to average 10 minutes between blocks at all times. In order to get a point where you could feasibly calculate a hash you would have to have an extraordinary breakdown of something (like all of the hashpower vanishing) in order to get enough time before the next block.
Re: Mining Bitcoin with pencil and paper: 0.67 hashes per day (2014)
#73> It's clear I'm not going to make my fortune off manual mining, and I haven't even included the cost of all the paper and pencils I'll need.
He's not taking into account price inflation over the long term. If BTC ever cracks a million USD, he'll really regret not squeezing every last bit of hashrate he can now.
Re: Mining Bitcoin with pencil and paper: 0.67 hashes per day (2014)
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
Honestly, what is getting me is that his book on sharpening pencils is actually 224 pages long. That seems awful long on such a simple subject!
And yet he made a half hour show with episodes such as "how to bounce a ball", "how to dig a hole, "how to open a door", "how to take a nap", etc.
Or, my personal favourite:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/77377.How_to_Shit_in_the...
Re: Mining Bitcoin with pencil and paper: 0.67 hashes per day (2014)
#75This is one of the most really hackerish thing I've seen. Bravo. Thank you for submitting.
Re: Mining Bitcoin with pencil and paper: 0.67 hashes per day (2014)
#76You could squeeze much more bitcoin out of yourself if you powered asic miner with a bicycle but I can appreciate low capital costs of pencil method.
using brain is way more cost efficient
Re: Mining Bitcoin with pencil and paper: 0.67 hashes per day (2014)
#77this is great. for your next trick can you do a few transactions in the tangle iota by hand too?
Re: Mining Bitcoin with pencil and paper: 0.67 hashes per day (2014)
#78Finally, something productive for the kids in Africa to do!
Re: Mining Bitcoin with pencil and paper: 0.67 hashes per day (2014)
#79You could squeeze much more bitcoin out of yourself if you powered asic miner with a bicycle but I can appreciate low capital costs of pencil method.
Capital costs may not be trivial if you factor in food required for brainpower.
Re: Mining Bitcoin with pencil and paper: 0.67 hashes per day (2014)
#80I think you could even mine Bitcoin with Turing-complete cellular automata simulated by a crowd of trained dogs, receiving movement orders by a small internet-of-things bluetooth radio (powered by IOTA?), implanted into their brains. For what it worth...
video please