Although mining is a competitive business, starting is still relatively easy. In the early years of Bitcoin, hobbyists could simply boot up some software on their computer and get started right away. Those days are long gone, but setting up a dedicated Bitcoin miner is not as hard as it may seem at first.

Is it hard to do mining?

"Mining" is performed using sophisticated hardware that solves an extremely complex computational math problem. The first computer to find the solution to the problem receives the next block of bitcoins and the process begins again. Cryptocurrency mining is painstaking, costly, and only sporadically rewarding.

How long does it take to mine a Bitcoin?

Each Bitcoin block takes 10 minutes to mine. This means that in theory, it will take just 10 minutes to mine 1 BTC (as part of the 6.25 BTC reward).