Why is the probability of finding a winning nonce exactly the same for a new header and a header where you've already tried 1 billion nonces?

Why is the probability of finding a winning nonce exactly the same for a new header and a header where you've already tried 1 billion nonces?

I'm referring to this question: When do miners stop waiting for new transactions?

More specifically, this statement from the top answer:

"suppose you have a block header h1 on which you have already tried a billion nonce values, and a header h2 which has just been generated and on which no nonces have been tried yet. If you have the choice as to which one to hash next, which should you choose, for the greatest chance of finding a winning nonce? The answer is, it makes no difference - they both have exactly the same probability. So there is no harm in switching to h2"

I would have thought that the probability would be slightly higher for the first block (h1) as there are 1 billion nonces that you know do not succeed, i.e. fewer winning possibilities.

Complete newbie here and to the bitcoin world so apologies if I'm missing something obvious.

https://ift.tt/2Ke22MN

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

sendrawtransaction and txn-mempool-conflict

sendrawtransaction and txn-mempool-conflict When i sendrawtransaction to bitcoind, i get error (exceptions) 18: txn-mempool-conflict (use Bitcoin JSON-RPC denpamusic/php-bitcoinrpc ) But the transaction is sent to the network and is subsequently confirmed. Example one decoded transaction : https://jsfiddle.net/rn58a4j6/ then i send this transaction: 94ec12fc463230b4285a29b047608627c05572a4c6eabe6688a201ce49ae72f7 https://ift.tt/2MY2KP0
Read more

couldn't connect to server: EOF reached (code 1)

couldn't connect to server: EOF reached (code 1) I'm running a full node on my raspberry pi3. I try to do a simple command such as bitcoin-cli getblockchaininfo but I always get this error: error: couldn't connect to server: EOF reached (code 1) (make sure server is running and you are connecting to the correct RPC port) My bitcoin.conf file looks like this: Bitcoind options server=1 daemon=1 reindex-chainstate=1 reindex=1 txindex=1 disablewallet=1 listenonion=0 Connection settings rpcuser= * rpcpassword=* rpcport=8332 rpcallowip=127.0.0.1 rpcthreads=10 I also tried to get a command with "bitcoin-cli -rpcuser: * - rpcpassword=* -rpcportt8332 getblockchaininfo". But this also didn't work. Does someone has some advice or experience with this error? https://ift.tt/2D82TLW
Read more