Beginner Track 04
Mining is billions of lottery draws
To add a block to the chain you must find a hash that meets a specific condition. The only way is to keep changing the nonce and trying.
What you'll learn
- → What mining is — why billions of calculations are needed
- → How Bitcoin automatically adjusts difficulty
- → The halving and why total supply is capped at 21,000,000 BTC
🎰
SHA-256 is an unpredictable lottery
Hashing "Block:1" vs "Block:2" gives completely different results. There is no way to know in advance which nonce will produce a hash starting with "000...".
SHA256("Block:0") = 4a3f8c21... ✗
SHA256("Block:1") = b92e7f43... ✗
SHA256("Block:2") = 000032fa... ✓
💡 Why is this called "Proof of Work"?
Finding a valid hash requires enormous real computing power. The valid hash itself is proof that “we did this much work” — a proof of work. Faking it requires actually doing the work, making manipulation impossible.