Bitcoin miners are the heart of the Bitcoin network. Thanks to their efforts, new Bitcoins are released into circulation on a regular and predictable timetable.
There will only ever be a total supply of only 21 million Bitcoins that can ever come into existence. This is because miners are making new Bitcoins at a rate of about 38 every day. The code that produces these coins caps the quantity that can be unearthed at a final tally of 21 million.
The History of Bitcoin mining
In the early days of Bitcoin mining things were simpler and there just wasn’t much competition from other prospectors. Just like the gold rush from the American west (1848-1855), the first miners on the scene got the bigger gold nuggets – and hence a bigger piece of the pie.
Similarly early Bitcoin miners could invest in bigger rigs, they saw the future of where crypto could eventually be, so they made necessary investments. They then made the switch from traditional CPU based miners to power hungry GPU behemoths.
The future of Bitcoin mining
And now in 2022 new and old Bitcoin investors are again making another switch in mining tech – this time to so-called ASIC (application specific integrated circuit) machines from Bitmain amongst others. These macines are far more efficient at their assigned mining duties and are also less noisy and prone to breaking like GPUs do.
It’s crazy now to remember that in the early days of crypto you use an old laptop to mine Bitcoins because the first coins were simple easier to get at. But just like the miner in the old west things got harder when others starting digging too.
