The charismatic cryptocurrency and the numerous thoughts that arise in the minds of viewers often surround some obvious questions: how does it arise and what happens to its circulation? However, the answer is simple. Bitcoins must be mined for the cryptocurrency to exist on the Bitcoin market. The mysterious creator of Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto, envisioned a technique to exchange the valuable cryptocurrencies online, eliminating the need for any centralized institution. For Bitcoins, there is an alternative way to keep the necessary records of the transaction history of the entire circulation, and all of this is managed in a decentralized way.

The ledger that facilitates the process is known as the “blockchain.” The gist of this ledger may require tons of newsprint to appear regularly on all of the popular Bitcoin news. Blockchain is expanding every minute, existing on the machines involved in the huge Bitcoin network. People can question the validity, even authenticity, of these transactions and their recordings on the Blockchain. However, this is also justified through the Bitcoin mining process. Mining allows the creation of new Bitcoin and the compilation of transactions in the general ledger. Mining essentially involves solving complex mathematical calculations, and miners employ immense computing power to solve it. The individual or ‘group’ who solves the puzzle, places the next block and also wins a reward. And how can mining avoid double spending? Almost every 10 minutes, pending transactions are mined in a block. Therefore, any inconsistency or illegitimacy is completely ruled out.

For Bitcoins, there is no talk of mining in the traditional sense of the term. Bitcoins are mined using cryptography. A hash function called “double SHA-256” is used. But how difficult is it to mine Bitcoins? This can be another query. This is highly dependent on the effort and computing power that goes into mining. Another factor worth mentioning is the protocol of the software. For each block of 2016, the difficulty involved in mining Bitcoins adjusts itself simply to maintain the protocol. In turn, the rate of block generation remains constant. A Bitcoin difficulty graph is a perfect measure to demonstrate the difficulty of mining over time. Difficulty level adjusts to go up or down in direct proportion, depending on computational power, whether it’s powering up or taking off. As the number of miners increases, the percentage of profit earned by the participants decreases, they all end up with smaller portions of the profit.

Having individual economies and communities, cryptocurrencies like Dogecoin, Namecoin or Peercoin are called Altcoins. These are alternatives to Bitcoin. Almost like Bitcoins, these ‘cousins’ have a huge following and fans who are eager to dive deep into the huge ocean and start mining it. The algorithms used for Altcoin mining are SHA-256 gold Scrypt. There are also several other innovative algorithms. Ease, affordability, and simplicity can make it feasible to mine Altcoins on a PC or employing special mining software. Altcoins are a bit “practical” compared to bitcoins, but transforming them into large amounts of money is a bit difficult. Crypto fans can only hope, if some of them could witness the equivalent astronomical fame!