As
cryptocurrencies and in particular, Bitcoin, move from the nascent to mainstream, so too does the growing need to authenticate and verify these digital transactions using
blockchain technology. In place of a centralised banking system, Bitcoin ‘mining’ now provides the equivalent security and authentication services that a bank would.
The Bitcoin blockchain uses a complex algorithm (SHA-256) powered by massive computational capability to locate the unique key numbers which provide the verification and authentication of individual transactions. This transactional ‘movement’ from A to B is very secure and very fast. Bitcoin mining is made profitable when ‘miners’ are awarded Bitcoin (6.25BTC) for every successful block that is added to the Bitcoin blockchain.
There will only ever be a total of 21m Bitcoins available globally, with approximately 18.6m Bitcoins already in circulation. Currently this number changes about once every ten minutes, when a new block is mined — and this new block adds varying numbers of Bitcoin into general circulation. As more Bitcoins are mined over time, the remaining Bitcoins become more difficult to mine.