Considering the cryptocurrency and mining boom in recent times, nearly everyone is interested in it, even if only as a passing interest. You’ve probably asked yourself, though, how long it would take for a single computer to mine a bitcoin to see how long it would take you to earn one. It’s essential to keep in mind that even if 1 BTC doesn’t sound like much, it’s more than 40,000$ as of the time of writing this article. If you want to be up to date with crypto and its ever-changing values, take a look at cryptonews.
How does mining even work?
To understand how long it would take, we first need basic knowledge of how mining works. A massive network of crypto miners all try to discover new blocks which have a set BTC value to them, 6.25 currently and halving every four or so years. One block is found every 10 minutes by someone. Because anyone can discover a block and many people are competing, the odds of being that person is relatively low. This is why people band and join together, forming mining pools where no matter who discovers the block, the reward is evenly distributed between all participants based on their hash rate or computational power provided. The most significant current pool is F2pool which provides around 17.5% of the total hash rate (33.36 EH/s out of 190.36 EH/s). This means that a little under 1 in 5 blocks is discovered by someone in the F2pool.
What does this mean for solo miners?
As previously stated, solo mining is quite less consistent and riskier because you have to be lucky and be the one person out of a thousand to discover a block. Depending on your hash rate, the average time it would take for this to happen can vary wildly. Unless you get very lucky, it would not be profitable simply due to the power costs associated with keeping your rig running for all this time unless you had an incredibly high hash rate. Solo mining can be either an incredibly profitable endeavor or a massive money sink with no way out wholly depending on whether or not you get lucky and end up discovering a block within a reasonable timeframe. What’s reasonable? Well, that depends on how expensive the electricity for keeping your rig running is.
What would it take to make 1 BTC consistently?
As with anything crypto-related, these numbers are subject to change at any time. As for making 1 BTC every day, would need to contribute 0.55% of the total hash rate or slightly more than 1 EH/s. To put this into perspective, even if you were to use the latest mining rig, it would take thousands of them to reach this hash rate which isn’t feasible, not only due to the price but due to availability as getting several thousand of the latest mining rigs would be pretty difficult. It would take a single one of these rigs around four years to get 1 BTC in rewards inside a pool.
What about my rig?
To wrap back to the question of what it would take your specific rig to mine 1 BTC, you can see that the answer isn’t simple, and due to luck being a massive factor at play we can only work out the averages required and not an exact number. Perhaps you’ll get lucky and discover a block quickly, perhaps it will take you more than the calculations would say. The main factors at play in how long it would take your rig to discover a block are the hash rate and luck. The time it would take also depends on the total hash rate of miners in the network. As the, hash rate goes up, the difficulty of mining also increases to keep the time for a block to be discovered stable at roughly 10 minutes regardless of how many people are attempting to find it at any given time.
Should I solo mine then?
Should you solo mine depends on one thing. Do you think the risk vs. reward is worth it? If you believe that risking far lower consistency for that massive 6.25 BTC payout is worth it, then solo mining would be the way to go. However, keep in mind that if you don’t get lucky, you could roll the bones thousands of times and mine for months or even years without discovering a block yourself. So there is a reason why many miners, even those with industrial level setups, often prefer to mine in pools.
If, for whatever reason, the number of people and the total hash rate would go down, then the odds of you being the one person to discover a new block would increase. However, it also means that if the total hash rate continues to grow, your chances will keep going down unless you also proportionally increase the hash rate of your setup.
What about cloud mining?
While this is a valid alternative that many people do right now, since you play no part in running the actual hardware and often don’t even know where it is located, I would only recommend it to those who like to gamble. The matter is that with cloud mining, you simply buy into a contract that promises to pay you a certain amount of bitcoins after a given period, and the only way to see if it will work out is to wait and hope for your payout. Therefore, I would not recommend this method even if it was the only alternative simply because other options include mining in pools where you know what you’re getting. You can also see how much your hash rate contributes to the total of whatever pool it is that you’re using.
What to take away
We believe you should remember that the time it takes for a block to be discovered is stable regardless of the number of people trying, which means that the blocks’ difficulty is never the same. Also, remember that you are betting reward versus consistency in solo vs. pool mining. Whatever you decide to do, remember to crunch the numbers on your own in case they’ve changed and to compare them to electricity costs in your area to see if you should mine and how.
Story by David Van DerEde
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