3 ms·
To be able to mine at all (with whatever speed), you need to be able to complete an individual hash operation in less than 10 minutes - before the next Bitcoin
by Erlich_Bachman 9y ago
To be able to mine at all (with whatever speed), you need to be able to complete an individual hash operation in less than 10 minutes - before the next Bitcoin block is created elsewhere on the network - because you have to base your calculation on that previous block's hash. If it takes more than a day to compute one hash, it does not work, no matter how many of them you could theoretically do in parallel.
- esnard 9y ago10 minutes is the average time between the creation of the two blocks, so the time could be much greater. Block 74638 was mined almost 7 hours after the previous one, for example, because of a serious overflowing issue. Of course, the combinaison of "no block created in 36 hours" & "the hand-calculated block is valid" is highly unlikely, but still possible.
- Shank 9y agoThe network adjusted difficulty aims to average 10 minutes between blocks at all times. In order to get a point where you could feasibly calculate a hash you would have to have an extraordinary breakdown of something (like all of the hashpower vanishing) in order to get enough time before the next block.