Out of curiosity, I wanted to see the length of time required to calculate one hash and how many hash operations are required to produce one Bitcoin? Upon some digging found some math that was put online in 2013… 5 years ago. Does this math change or is the algorithm always the same?  I will get one of our developers looking into this so stayed tuned.

hashes per bitcoin 
= (network hash rate) / (25 BTC per 10 minutes)
= (180 * Th / s) / (25 * BTC / (600 * s) )
= 180 * 600 / 25 * Th / s / BTC * s
= 2,700 Th / BTC
= 2,700,000,000,000,000 h/BTC

So that’s a BIG NUMBER! So this lead me to wonder what is after 1 trillion… It takes 2.7 Quadrillion hashes calculated to generate a BTC. Whoa…

What is the approximate network hash rate to mine Bitcoin? Through research, new blocks are published every 10 minutes on average. There is no ‘required’ amount of hash power to mine a block. It is all a game of luck, a race against the rest of the network. To mine a valid block roughly once per hour, you would be mining a sixth of the total blocks (~6 blocks mined per hour), so in theory you would need around a sixth of the total hashpower on the bitcoin network. You can see the current network hash rate here: https://blockchain.info/charts/hash-rate which updates very frequently. At the time of this post, May 2018, that’s roughly 35,112,338 per second (million terahashes per second).

Some interesting FAQ’s around numbers in Mining Bitcoins

• How many Bitcoin are in existence right now? How many Bitcoins are there left?
  There are now 17 million bitcoins in existence — only 4 million left to ‘mine’ The 17 millionth of 21 million bitcoins that will ever exist was “mined” Thursday, according to data from Blockchain.info. Apr 26, 2018
• How many blocks are in a Bitcoin?
  The block reward started at 50 BTC in block #1 and halves every 210,000 blocks. This means every block up until block #210,000 rewards 50 BTC, while block 210,001 rewards 25. Since blocks are mined on average every 10 minutes, 144 blocks are mined per day on average.
• How many new Bitcoins are created each day?
  The next and third halving will occur in 2020 and till then 12.5 bitcoins would be mined during each block. On an average, a block takes 10 minutes to get mined. So, we can approximate the number of Bitcoins produced each day to be around 1800.
• How many hashes are in a Bitcoin?
  To sum up this list to include the above original question: hashes per bitcoin = (network hash rate) / (25 BTC per 10 minutes) = (180 * Th / s) / (25 * BTC / (600 * s) ) = 180 * 600 / 25 * Th / s / BTC * s = 2,700 Th / BTC = 2,700,000,000,000,000 h/BTC. Jul 7, 2013
• What is a hash? Hashing means taking an input string of any length and giving out an output of a fixed length. In the context of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, the transactions are taken as an input and run through a hashing algorithm (Bitcoin uses SHA-256) which gives an output of a fixed length.   More on the different types of Hash Functions on Wiki.

The numbers game…

Speaking about numbers, if you are curious how numbers step up… What’s after a billion? What’s after a trillion? 

billion 109 1012 ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓
billiard 1015 ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓
trillion 1012 1018 ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓
quadrillion 1015 1024 ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓
quintillion 1018 1030 ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓
sextillion 1021 1036 ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓
septillion 1024 1042 ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓
octillion 1027 1048 ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓
nonillion 1030 1054 ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓
decillion 1033 1060 ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓
undecillion 1036 1066 ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓
duodecillion 1039 1072 ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓
tredecillion 1042 1078 ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓
quattuordecillion 1045 1084 ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓
quindecillion (quinquadecillion) 1048 1090 ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓
sexdecillion (sedecillion) 1051 1096 ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓
septendecillion 1054 10102 ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓
octodecillion 1057 10108 ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓
novemdecillion (novendecillion) 1060 10114 ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓
vigintillion 1063 10120 ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓

Ok, enough geeking out today! Got more questions? Connect with us on Instagram, we talk back. 🙂