Curious about Mining

Got a question about Bitcoin mining! To make it simple, check this out: Imagine there are like 700 to 1000 Bitcoin transactions happening daily, and there are just 10 miners out there handling all of it. Each of these miners gets a sweet reward of 1 Bitcoin for finishing transactions every day. Now, I've got two questions: First question: If 5 of those miners decide to pack it in, will the mining rewards for the remaining 5 double or go up? Second question: If we add 10 more miners to the mix (making it 20 in total), will that mean less income for everyone and slow down the mining process?

1. Mining reward will not vary depending on the number of miners, but rather on the transaction fees included in each block. 2. Whoever obtains the block will receive the return. Increasing the number of miners will increase the difficulty and therefore decrease the probability of finding the correct nonce.

Yeah, basically yes. If some miners quit, the remaining miners get a better chance to earn. If more miners join, the reward gets harder to win because more people are competing. But Bitcoin adjusts the difficulty, so blocks still come around every 10 minutes.

YES, income increases because competition goes down, the total network hashrate decreases, and your share of the network becomes larger; for example, with 10 miners you have a 10% chance to find a block, but if only 5 miners remain your chance increases to 20%, meaning you find blocks roughly twice as often. However, an important nuance is that Bitcoin automatically adjusts its difficulty: when fewer miners are active, the difficulty decreases so that blocks are still produced approximately every 10 minutes, which means that while income per miner does increase, it does not happen instantly due to this adjustment period. YES, income decreases because competition increases, the total network hashrate goes up, and your share of the network becomes smaller. For example, with 10 miners you have a 10% chance to find a block, but if the number of miners grows to 20, your chance drops to 5%, meaning you find blocks less often and your income declines. Another important nuance is that difficulty also increases, while blocks are still produced roughly every 10 minutes, so the total BTC issuance does not change — it is simply distributed among more participants on a probabilistic basis.

In simple terms, the fewer miners there are, the more coins each one receives. In the Bitcoin network, difficulty is controlled by a strict mathematical algorithm. To prevent miners from finding blocks too quickly, the difficulty changes every 2016 blocks. Under ideal conditions, each block should take 10 minutes. 20160 minutes = 14 days.

Yes, for the most part; however, mining earnings depend on two things, one of which is predictable and known in advance, which is block subsidy (the fixed reward in the system a miner gets whether they processed transactions or not), and the second one is the transaction fees, which change a lot depending on the market condition -- it could be worth a lot or close to nothing. Now if we were to assume that the entire 'income' is fixed and every miner has the same hashrate, then yes, your theory stands correct. You have 10 candies to give to 10 people, if 5 of them leave, the remaining 5 each get 2 candies, if 90 people join, then each 10 of those 100 must share the same candy which obviosully going to be a massive fuckery anyway.

Here comes the LUCK part of the mining.... everyone has the same chance, but different luck. Say everyone has mining power giving 5 blocks a day In average (theory): all should find 5 blocks every day. So 10 blocks in 2 days ... 50 blocks in 10 days ...   (365x5) blocks a year...  In reality: some can mine only 1 block first day (unlucky) and 9 blocks next day (back to normal) some can mine 15 blocks the first day (superlucky) and no blocks in following two days (back to normal) or alternatively they won't find any block in following 5 days (making them unlucky)... Mining complexity (difficulty) recalculates every 2016 blocks found. This is hardcoded self adjusting feature. When last 2016 block was found to quick (say in 7 days instead of regular 14 ) the difficulty doubles. Works the opposite way as well. Please use quotes properly. Do not extend the quoted post ( write under it )

A solo miner has a chance of finding one block every 1,000 years, for example. If a miner finds this block in the first year, they're a lucky miner. But if we're talking about longer mining times, we usually approach the average. It's unrealistic for a miner with a chance of finding one block every 1,000 years to find two blocks in the first two years.