How To Mine Bitcoin – Step By Step Guide Updated for 2022

Bitcoin has a fixed supply of 21 million coins. These coins need to be created and distributed (fairly?). For this to happen, bitcoin must be mined. The word “mining” is an analogy borrowed from the process of extracting precious metals as they need to be mined from the ground at the cost of labor and energy.

To mine Bitcoin, computers spread around the world compete to solve cryptographic puzzles at the cost of processing power and energy. Any miner that successfully solves the puzzle first is rewarded with some additional bitcoin (called the block reward). These rewards pay miners for securing the network, verifying transactions and adding blocks to the blockchain.

Currently the mining reward is 6.25 bitcoin. This rate of newly created bitcoin happening approximately every ten minutes is cut in half every 4 years. While we started at 50 bitcoin in 2009, the rate was cut to 25 in 2012, then to 12.5 in 2016, having reached 6.25 by now. It’s estimated that this will continue until 2140, by then every single bitcoin will be mined. Now that a little more than 18.6 million bitcoins have been created already, only about 2.4 million coins are left to mine.

Read the Guide: What the F&ck is Bitcoin? 

Watch the video: Blockstream: The Benefits of Investing in Bitcoin Mining