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Originally Posted by ianlippert
One question about mining. Is it something separate from day to day bitcoin transactions or does everyone have a chance (however small) to solve one the problems and score a bit coin. Could some rando score a bit coin or do you have to be doing something specific to mining?
I was always under the impression that once mining got to hard for individuals it would be the whole network that essentially did the mining. With mining turning from a private endeavor to something more akin to a lottery.
You have to be specifically mining. It used to be in the standard client, although it was shut off when it was a dumb idea to CPU mine. There's probably a way to enable it through the standard client. But even with a very specialized computer and GPU mining, you'd be like 1 in a million to find a block in the next year.
It still is individuals mining, although there are pools. Pools are basically groups of miners working together and splitting the lottery winnings. Think of it is a team of poker players entering the main event with a shared bankroll, and they split winnings. It's not really an EV play if the players are equal, but a variance reduction play. Most pools take a fee.
There is a peer to peer pool that basically pays out based on how close you were to solving blocks along the way to prove you are working. Think of this system as a group of lottery players that buy a lot of tickets. Each ticket someone shows that matches 3 numbers will get a "share" of any winnings that the pool gets. This is a way to prove you are actually buying the tickets and distribute winnings fairly with less variance than just individuals buying tickets.