Instead of extracting precious metals from the ground with picks and shovels in their hands, this time bitcoin miners are extracting bitcoin over the internet network with advanced computers.

Cryptocurrency Bitcoin broke the all-time record by breaking the $40,000 threshold in early January. Another issue that came to the fore with Bitcoin, which has been on the rise since the beginning of 2020, albeit fluctually, was virtual currency mining.

Instead of extracting precious metals from the ground with picks and shovels in their hands, this time Bitcoin miners are extracting Bitcoin over the internet network with advanced computers.

How many Bitcoins are in the market and how much is left?

Bitcoin resource in the world is limited to 21 million. 18.5 million of these are already in circulation. In other words, there are 2.5 million Bitcoins left that can be produced by miners.

Bitcoin mining is done by high-capacity computers solving extremely complex mathematical problems. It does not seem possible to solve these mathematical problems by hand or with classical personal computers. These problems are not randomly determined. In fact, miners, in a sense, act as a notary confirming transactions made with Bitcoin. When each transaction is confirmed, it is added to a specific block and combined with other confirmed transactions to form a blockchain.

It basically consists of keeping a record of all transactions made to Bitcoinl from the moment the blockchain was produced.

How and how much Bitcoin do miners earn?

The use of the blockchain method in transactions started when the mysterious founder of Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto, wanted to prevent a person from making more than one transaction with the same Bitcoin. When computers solve enough problems to process 1 megabyte, they are rewarded with new Bitcoins.

When this process first started, miners who managed to solve enough problems were awarded 50 Bitcoin. But this award is halved every 4 years.

The amount of reward given in 2020 was 6.25 Bitcoin. In other words, miners earn more than $200,000 worth of Bitcoin in exchange for successfully solving problems at the time of this news release.

Is every problem solved rewarded?

The miner who solves enough problems for each 1 megabyte transaction does not receive a reward. For this, you need to be the first miner to reach the correct or closest answer.

How does bitcoin mining work?

Bitcoin miners have to solve complex mathematical problems to confirm each transaction, and the block created by solving the problem is added to the chain of previous confirmed transactions in the correct order.

To do this, miners use cryptographic message hashes that provide one-way encryption. In order to decrypt this code and access the data in it, the same extract must be found, and this can only be done by trying each of the trillions of different combinations one by one. Therefore, this extract acts as the key to that block and prevents interference from outside.

Mining is also done according to different difficulty levels. This degree of difficulty changes every 2016 blocks, that is, every two weeks.

The degree of difficulty is determined by the power required for the calculation. This is designed to keep the block creation time required to confirm a transaction at around 10 minutes. This period can be extended or shortened depending on the number of participants in the miner network and their computing power.

The fact that the source of Bitcoin is not controlled from a single center and mining can be done from anywhere in the world is shown as the point where it differs most from the classical currencies printed by central banks.

What needs to be done for Bitcoin mining?

Unfortunately, in 2021, it is not possible to do Bitcoin mining from your home computers as in the old days. For this, you need to be involved in highly complex networks that have been specially set up.


In order to mine Bitcoin, you either need to set up your own hardware or use a mining platform over the cloud. The cost of a special computer called ASIC Miner, which you will install yourself, can reach up to 5000 thousand dollars.

Mining over the cloud does not have a high investment cost, but it is stated that mining over the cloud is almost not profitable. Because the difficulty of mining is increasing day by day, and the expenditure made in this process can often be more than the reward.

Is Bitcoin mining harmful to the environment?

Bitcoin mining is not considered an environmentally friendly process as it consumes a large amount of electrical energy while solving problems.

According to a study conducted in 2019, it is estimated that 3 to 15 million tons of carbon gas is released due to cryptocurrency mining. The cost of electrical energy spent on daily cryptocurrency transactions is thought to be $25.2 mil

Cryptocurrencies besides Bitcoin

Yes. Mining can be done with the same methods for cryptocurrencies such as Ethereum and Dash, whose working principle is the same as Bitcoin.