Can Bitcoin be mined using Pencil and Paper 📝?
SHA-256 algorithm used for Bitcoin mining is pretty simple & can in fact be done by hand. However, the process is EXTREMELY slow compared to hardware mining & is entirely impractical. Performing the algorithm manually is a good way to understand exactly how it works.
In this video, Ken Shirriff shows us the steps to manually mine a Bitcoin block. He performs the first round of hashing to mine a block. To complete one round of hashing takes him 16 minutes, 45 seconds!
In the image below, the hash result is highlighted in yellow. The zeroes in this hash show that it is a successful hash. Note that the zeroes are at the end of the hash. The reason is that Bitcoin inconveniently reverses all the bytes generated by SHA-256.
Source : Google
A PEEK INTO MINING HARDWARE 👀
SHA-256 is very easy to implement in digital logic – simple Boolean operations & 32-bit addition. Hence, custom Application-Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) chips can implement the SHA-256 algorithm very efficiently in hardware, putting hundreds of rounds on a chip in parallel.
Source : Google
The image below shows a silicon die inside a Bitfury ASIC chip. This chip mines Bitcoin at 2-3 Ghash/second.
Image courtesy : Zeptobars
To put things into perspective:
Doing one round of SHA-256 by hand took Ken 16 minutes, 45 seconds. (Avg hash rate of 0.67 hashes/day). In comparison, current Bitcoin mining hardware does several terahashes per second, about a quintillion times faster than manual hashing.
Energy consumption and costs:
Ken’s energy cost per hash is about 67 quadrillion times that of mining hardware (as of September, 2014). The hashing task itself doesn’t accomplish anything useful in itself, but because finding a successful block is so difficult, it ensures that no individual has the resources to take over the Bitcoin system. The problem with manual mining is new blocks are mined about every 10 minutes, so even if a person did succeed in mining a block, it would be totally obsolete (orphaned) by the time he/she/they finished.
Source : google
If you are curious to know more about Bitcoin mining, we highly recommend you read Ken’s blog, which explains Bitcoin mining in details, right down to the hex data and network traffic:
http://www.righto.com/2014/02/bitcoin-mining-hard-way-algorithms.html
