STAGE 4 · GO DEEPLEVEL · Intermediate7 LESSONSABOUT 38 MINNETWORK & MINING
Mining is the part of Bitcoin that touches the physical world: chips, electricity, warehouses in cold places. This course explains the business, the physics and the politics of it. Seven lessons, about 45 minutes.
BY THE END OF THIS COURSE YOU WILL BE ABLE TO
- Describe a miner's day: templates, hashing, pools, payouts
- Compute whether a machine is profitable from hashprice and power cost
- Explain the energy debate from both sides with numbers
- Say exactly what miners control and what they do not
- Decide whether mining at home makes sense for you
Every lesson ends with a quiz or a challenge; the course is complete when each lesson is.
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LESSONS
01What a miner actually doesA miner assembles a candidate block, hashes its header trillions of times per second with different nonces, and broadcasts when one hash is below the target.✓ quiz5 MIN✓02From CPUs to ASICsMining moved from CPUs to GPUs to ASICs, chips that only compute SHA-256. Efficiency in joules per terahash decides who survives.✓ quiz⚡ challenge5 MIN✓03Mining pools and Stratum V2Pools combine hash power so miners get steady income. The pool chooses the transactions, which concentrates power; Stratum V2 hands that choice back to miners.✓ quiz5 MIN✓04The economics: hashprice and halvingsHashprice (dollars per terahash per day) times your hash rate is revenue; power price times efficiency is cost. Halvings cut revenue in half; survivors are the efficient.✓ quiz⚡ challenge6 MIN✓05The energy debate, in depthMining is a flexible, location-agnostic electricity buyer, which lets it use stranded and surplus power and stabilise grids. It also uses real energy, and the trade is a judgment.▶ 2✓ quiz7 MIN✓06What miners can and cannot doMiners order transactions and can briefly censor or reorganise at great cost. They cannot print coins, spend others' coins or change the rules. 2017 proved it.▶ 1✓ quiz5 MIN✓07Should you mine at home?At household power rates, home mining loses money against simply buying. It makes sense with cheap power, useful heat, a desire for non-KYC coins, or as education.✓ quiz5 MIN✓