How many zeroes does the current target have?

Question

I'm trying to get my head around the difficulty setting of Bitcoin. How can I calculate how many zeros the target string needs to start with?

score 11 · Answer 1 · answered May 16 '16 at 01:00

11

17 judging by the latest blocks published on blockchain.info: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000000057fcc708cf0130d95e27c5819203e9f967ac56e4df598ee

answered May 16 '16 at 01:00

derrend

696
5
16

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Thanks especially for the link to make it easy to find out the answer in the future, as well. – sarnold Jan 18 '17 at 01:23
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The future is now ;-) Changed to 18, https://blockchain.info/pt/block/0000000000000000008be77e83deb352669b55fbe8f5ed208005fc1a9830c06c (since Feb 2017 as this block, perhps before). – Peter Krauss Nov 18 '17 at 12:38
An early block of Mar' 2009 (block deep 6100) have 8 zeros (see same at other explorer). – Peter Krauss Nov 18 '17 at 14:16
Still 18 zeros in June 2018 – Paul Razvan Berg Jun 23 '18 at 17:29
December 2018, 19 zeros – Konstantinos Kamaropoulos Dec 16 '18 at 15:38

score 3 · Answer 2 · answered May 16 '16 at 15:20

3

Clarifying: difficulty is a more human-friendly representation of the target. Tha target itself is not specified in terms of the amount of zeroes. This seemed to be the case with hashcash.

The more precise definition of the target is a maximum accepted number for the produced block hash. In this sense a certain hash with a certain number of leading zeroes may be accepted and another hash with the same amount of leading zeroes may not be accepted.

answered May 16 '16 at 15:20

Jonathas Carrijo

131
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Hi Jonathas, we see that the amount is growing, so, who (authority or Bitcoin-rule) define the amount? – Peter Krauss Nov 18 '17 at 12:43
Hum... See current difficulty and target concept, this is the reference for number of zeros (!). – Peter Krauss Nov 18 '17 at 13:56

How many zeroes does the current target have?

2 Answers2