I've waddled trough 4 pages and tried to read most replies... I tought about just letting this thread pass by, but since i've seen nonsense being spewed, even by longtime members, i had no other choice than to set the record straight.
I would propose that everybody tries to read this post (i've tried to make it as newbie friendly as humanly possible, even if it meant oversimplifying) and ONLY post in this thread if you have LEGITIMATE questions about my post or if you have PROOF that i messed up. If there are no more questions, or if you fail to deliver proof that my reasoning is wrong, please let this thread die in piece (this topic has been discussed to death anyways).(part of) The theoryIn order to mine a block, a miner makes a new block header by taking the sha256d hash of the header of the previous block, adding the merkle root of all transactions in the block he's trying to solve, adding some other data that isn't interesting for this post and adding a random nonce (usually incremental). In order to solve the block, a miner increments the nonce and then executes following formula: sha256(sha256(new block header)). If the result of this algorithm is under a certain target, the block is considered to be solved and can be broadcasted to the network. If the result of the algorithm is over the target, the miner increments the nonce and tries again.
The target value is determined by the difficulty. The bitcoin network adusts this difficulty everytime 2016 blocks were solved (about 2 weeks). The difficulty is adjusted upwards or downwards to make sure the average time between 2 blocks is 10 minutes. So, if a lot of hashrate would be added to the network, the difficulty would shift upwards after a maximum of 2 weeks, this rising difficulty would make the target value lower, making it harder to solve a block.
My answer to the misconceptions:- Calculating a sha256 hash isn't really hard to do... You can even mine using a pen and paper... HOWEVER, since the networks hashrate is soooo high, the difficulty is sooooo high and the target is sooooooo low, the odds of finding a block are incredibly small (you would need an army of about 130.000 skilled mathematicians to create 1 sha256d hash result a second... By comparison, an antminer S9 creates 14000000000000 hashes each second). So, all in all, a cellphone's CPU or GPU *could* create sha256d hashes, however, the odds of ever finding a block, or even generate enough shares to get the minimum payout @ a pool are incredibly small... I once calculated you'd have better odds of winning the lottery several times in a row than than finding a block with your cellphone. In reality it's better to say it's impossible to mine with a cellphone/cpu/gpu... It makes life easyer for everybody
- In the future, it's indeed possible we move to 7 nm chips, and your cellphone becomes more powerfull than the PC you're using today... However, there is no reason to assume ASIC producers wouldn't follow the same technological trends. In other words: by the time cellphone companies are using 7 nm tech, ASIC producers will probably have switched to the same technology... Since an ASIC is generated for the sole purpose of creating sha256d hashes, it'll always be thousands of times more powerfull than a cellphone. They'll just push the difficulty to a level even future cellphones can't reach. So everybody saying: 'in the future you'll be able to mine bitcoin with your cellphone' => i'm sorry, but the odds of you being right are extreeeeemly small
- it's true samsung created a mining rig out of old cellphones. While their hashrate was higher than running one of those novelty mining apps you can find in the playstore, the power consumption vs the hashrate was still very, very, very, very poor. The hashrate in itself was really low to... So while it was true that samsung created such a mining rig, it should be considered as a proof of concept, something to show off with, or maybe a learning tool for samsung's engineers... However, you can not treat this samsung project as a legitimate mining project
Last but not least, i wanted to raise 2 extra points:
1) it's perfectly possible some altcoins could be mined with your cellphone/cpu/gpu... But we're in the bitcoin mining subforum.
2) if you want mathematical proof, check out my website:
https://www.mocacinno.com/mining/ . I've included a couple mobile cpu's because this question keeps on surfacing, and i wanted to proof to everybody that is spewing out nonsense that it's NOT a good idear to mine with your phone. For example, at current diff, mining with an ARM Cortex-A8 (a common cellphone CPU) in a pool would make your less than 1 satoshi per year...