How Long Does It Take To Mine A Bitcoin (And Why)?

Exact Answer: 10 Minutes

Bitcoin is one of the most sought-after cryptocurrencies in the world. Similarly, the mining of bitcoin is among the most favoured cryptocurrencies owing to the enormous amounts of profits it brings. Mining of bitcoin provides miners with bitcoin blocks that the miner can sell earning them revenue.

Mining bitcoin is the process that results in the creation of new bitcoins. Along with the creation of new bitcoins, mining also helps a miner to earn revenue as transaction fees. However, the mining of bitcoin is not the same as the mining of any other commodity as bitcoin is a digital currency without any physical shape.

How Long Does It Take To Mine A Bitcoin?

Mining just one bitcoin is not possible currently. However, bitcoin can be mined by the bitcoin miners in blocks. Mining one bitcoin block can take up to 10 minutes, at least on paper.

The reward on mining each block of bitcoin is set at 6.25 bitcoins. Thus, in just a little span of ten minutes, one can have a bitcoin which will be part of 6.25 BTC. This further means in ten minutes more than one bitcoin can be mined.

However, in practice, it may take more time than that. It may be because as they are several thousands of miners trying to mine a block of bitcoin. Now, as the supply of bitcoin is very limited and its demand is quite high, the block of bitcoin takes more time to get mined.

Mining bitcoin requires certain equipment, large amounts of electricity and the most important of them all, time. Miners receive the new bitcoin blocks as compensation for their hard work.

Since the supply and demand vary, mining a bitcoin is a random process and can be compared to that of a lottery. Thus, there is a lack of guarantee and insecurity of investments in mining for a bitcoin miner. This prompts the miner to join large pools of mining which are instrumental in reducing uncertainty and smoothening of revenue.

Why It Takes So Long To Mine A Bitcoin?

As described earlier, while only 6.25 bitcoin can be produced in ten minutes, yet there are nearly a million people around the globe who are in the business of mining. This makes the system of bitcoin mining random implying that even if the miner works very hard there is very little probability of him earning the bitcoin block.

The mining of Bitcoin is a volatile and uncertain business. Several factors make bitcoin mining possess such characteristics. Some of these factors are the price of bitcoin, Its network and adjustment and the hash rate.

The price of the bitcoin is inversely proportional to the time put up with to mine it. If the price would be less, many miners will find it insufficient and leave it. This would reduce demand and the remaining miners will take less time to mine new blocks. Conversely, when the price increases, it would result in more miners and more demand and would require more time to discover new blocks of bitcoin.

When several miners join together to form a pool for mining new blocks of bitcoin, they are called mining pools. As a result, their power is computed which is called the hash rate and their probability to mine bitcoin increases. However, the production of bitcoin is fixed for every ten minutes and thus, their ability to mine depends on the magnitude of the hash rate.

Conclusion

The mining of bitcoin does not always end up with great profits. Only a block of bitcoin is produced every ten minutes but the demand is high. This makes the mining business akin to gambling where the miners mine it randomly.

The time that is taken to mine a block of bitcoin depends on several issues like the profitability of bitcoin and the hash rate generated by the mining pools. The more favourable are these numbers, the more is the probability of the miner to mine bitcoin.

References

1. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-662-45472-5_28
2. https://digital-library.theiet.org/content/conferences/10.1049/cp.2014.0699