How long does it take to mine 1 Bitcoin?

Bitcoin (BTC) uses the consensus algorithm Proof of Work (PoW) as the basis for its security. This means that, like many other cryptocurrencies, the network of miners is used to discover blocks and add pending transactions to make them irreversible. The process of discovering one block takes about 10 minutes, and each has a fixed number of new Bitcoins. It is currently set at 6.25 BTC. It is halved approximately every four years (each 210,000 blocks), which reduces the number of BTCs extracted with each newly discovered block.

How long does it take to mine 1 Bitcoin?

Although the discovery of each block takes 10 minutes and each block brings a reward of 6.25 BTC, it is important to understand that in this process of discovering the blocks, essentially the entire mining network competes. This means that for only one miner in the entire mining network, the probability of extracting a block is relatively low.

For this reason, most BTC miners work together as part of a mining pool. They combine their hashrate to have a better chance of discovering a block. Then, no matter which miner in the pool actually reveals the block, the rewards are evenly distributed. Ie. a miner who contributes 1% of the hashrat pool will also receive 1% of the reward.

F2Pool is currently the largest pool, contributing around 20.52 EH / s out of a total bitcoin hash value of 123.39 EH / s. This share means that approximately 16.6% of all newly mined BTCs are mined by this pool – equivalent to 149.4 BTCs per day. So how long does it take to mine 1 Bitcoin per miner?

An individual miner who contributes 1% of the hashrate value (~ 205 PH / s) would earn approximately 1,494 BTC per day. This means that the miner would need almost 132 PH / s hashing speed to extract an average of 1 BTC per day at current difficulty levels.

To put it in perspective, this is the equivalent of 1,200 S19 Pro Antminers – currently one of the fastest ASIC miners on the market. The total cost would probably be around $ 2.4 million, assuming a price of $ 2,000 / piece.

For those with a smaller budget, it would take a total of 1,200 days to extract one BTC in F2Pool with one Antminer S19 Pro.

Solo mining

Statistically, a solo miner who would like to generate 1 BTC per day would have to contribute just over 0.11% of the total BTC hashrate.

BTC solo mining is nonsense for small miners. Because even with gigantic operations, 1,200 ASIC minerals would take almost a week to extract one block. So miners with several machines would probably cost years without extracting a single block.

You might also like: Bitcoin Mining Software Guide