<blockquote>
<p>I was on another forum and the claim was made that the miners using new technology GPUs</p>
</blockquote>
<p>GPU mining has been obsolete for Bitcoin mining since around 2014. All mining these days is done using custom chips specifically designed for Bitcoin mining. It is orders of magnitude more power-efficient.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>and because of this there will be more bitcoin produced.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Bitcoin has a fixed inflation schedule: 1 block every 10 minutes, and every block currently permits a subsidy 6.25 BTC (a number that halves every 4 years). The difficulty of producing a block goes up (or down) automatically as hashrate is added (or removed). This has a slight delay, so if the hashrate is continuously increasing, blocks will be produced slightly faster than 1 per 10 minutes, as the difficulty will always be slightly behind. This does increase the rate of inflation while it lasts, making the total supply be permanently ahead of schedule. However, due to exponentially decreasing subsidy, the limit is and remains approximately 21 million, regardless of block production speed.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>My understanding of block rewards is it's like a horserace between miners (or group of miners) to solve the blocks and the 1st to solve gets all of the reward.</p>
<p>Who is correct?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Block mining is like a lottery, where every hash tried is one ticket. The lottery is always sold out, so there will be always one winner. There is a new lottery on average every 10 minutes.</p>
<p>It is not like a race; a race would imply that the fastest miner always wins. This is not true, everyone wins approximately proportional to what percentage of the network rate they have.</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2021-01-06T16:29:16.013Z
Thanks for the answer ... so there hasn't been a breakthrough in GPUs to allow bitcoin mining even in a pool?
3dalliance
CC BY-SA 4.0
2021-01-06T17:15:20.420Z
They can, it's just incredibly unprofitable. Even ignoring electricity costs, the wear and tear on the hardware is going to cost more than what you make. This is not ever going to change; custom hardware is obviously more efficient than general purpose hardware.
Pieter Wuille
CC BY-SA 4.0
2021-01-05T20:14:42.497Z
2021-01-05T20:14:42.497Z
Pieter Wuille
<p>I was on another forum and the claim was made that the miners using new technology GPUs are flooding in and because of this there will be more bitcoin produced.  My understanding of block rewards is it's like a horserace between miners (or group of miners) to solve the blocks and the 1st to solve gets all of the reward.</p>
<p>Who is correct?</p>

<reward-schedule>
Does adding more miners create more bitcoin?
3dalliance
# Does adding more miners create more bitcoin?

(Asked by: username_0 on 2021-01-05)

I was on another forum and the claim was made that the miners using new technology GPUs are flooding in and because of this there will be more bitcoin produced. My understanding of block rewards is it's like a horserace between miners (or group of miners) to solve the blocks and the 1st to solve gets all of the reward.

Who is correct?

**Tags:** reward-schedule


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## 1 answers

### Answer by username_1 on 2021-01-05. Score: 5 | Accepted answer

> I was on another forum and the claim was made that the miners using new technology GPUs

GPU mining has been obsolete for Bitcoin mining since around 2014. All mining these days is done using custom chips specifically designed for Bitcoin mining. It is orders of magnitude more power-efficient.

> and because of this there will be more bitcoin produced.

Bitcoin has a fixed inflation schedule: 1 block every 10 minutes, and every block currently permits a subsidy 6.25 BTC (a number that halves every 4 years). The difficulty of producing a block goes up (or down) automatically as hashrate is added (or removed). This has a slight delay, so if the hashrate is continuously increasing, blocks will be produced slightly faster than 1 per 10 minutes, as the difficulty will always be slightly behind. This does increase the rate of inflation while it lasts, making the total supply be permanently ahead of schedule. However, due to exponentially decreasing subsidy, the limit is and remains approximately 21 million, regardless of block production speed.

> My understanding of block rewards is it's like a horserace between miners (or group of miners) to solve the blocks and the 1st to solve gets all of the reward.
>
> Who is correct?

Block mining is like a lottery, where every hash tried is one ticket. The lottery is always sold out, so there will be always one winner. There is a new lottery on average every 10 minutes.

It is not like a race; a race would imply that the fastest miner always wins. This is not true, everyone wins approximately proportional to what percentage of the network rate they have.

> **Comments:**
> **username_0**: Thanks for the answer ... so there hasn't been a breakthrough in GPUs to allow bitcoin mining even in a pool?  
> **username_1**: They can, it's just incredibly unprofitable. Even ignoring electricity costs, the wear and tear on the hardware is going to cost more than what you make. This is not ever going to change; custom hardware is obviously more efficient than general purpose hardware.  

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