Bitcoin Hashers vs. Bitcoin Miners

Added: 2026-05-11

[00:00:00]This is Matthew Cat's Bitcoin University. Today I want to talk about the difference between Bitcoin hashers and Bitcoin miners. A hasher is just someone who runs one or more Bitcoin mining rigs. In other words, AS6 that generate SHA 256 hash rate which itself is rapidly becoming a global fungeable salailable digital commodity. But being a Bitcoin miner is so much more than being a hasher. I thought I would take this passage from Renault Kuni's Bitcoin Blockspace Weekly and he took the idea from Bob Bernett of Barefoot Mining. But here's a list of what a minor actually is and what a minor actually does. In casual usage, minor and hasher are treated as the same thing. They are not.

[00:00:42]Bob Bernett of Barefoot Mining has been consistent in drawing this distinction publicly and his framework is the right one. So this is what a full miner does.

[00:00:50]A full miner runs a Bitcoin node, manages a mempool. These are all the unconfirmed transactions that haven't yet been included in a block that nodes send to one another. A full miner also signals for protocol changes. This would be soft forks. A full miner validates blocks, creates and receives the Coinbase transaction. That's the payout transaction for the minor reward.

[00:01:11]Chooses transactions for the block template. In other words, builds their own blocks and decides what's what gets included in those blocks. and also broadcast block candidates directly to the network, not relying on someone else to do that. And then at the end he writes and hashes. And then Renault goes on to write seven of those functions interface directly with the network, the Bitcoin network. One does not, which is hashing. It's the only function that is purely computational with no networkfacing component. And then he has a nice diagram here showing the hasher model and the full minor model. And this is the problem with the current setup.

[00:01:47]We have a lot of people who think they're Bitcoin miners, but they're just hashers. And they sell their hash rate to five large pools. Foundry and pool, F2 pool via BTC and Spiderpool, which together, as we can see, if we add up this pie chart, make 90% of the blocks.

[00:02:03]If you want to follow Renault's work, I'll put a link to his X in the description notes below. Now, with Rented Hash, it's possible for anyone to be an industrial strength home minor.

[00:02:13]And I can show you. We can basically go down this list and tick various things off. A full miner runs a bitcoin node.

[00:02:18]If you have a start 9 server which you buy or build, you can do that. I'm running bitcoin knots plus bip 110 right here. Let's see what else manages a mempool. There's a mempool app you can do here which shows you what's inside my mempool. And you can see I'm not uh I'm not relaying any garbage. What else is there? Signals for protocol changes.

[00:02:36]That's why I'm running bitcoin knots plus bip 110 validates blocks. I'm doing that with my node creates and receives Coinbase transactions. I'm doing that as part of mining with ocean. So I'm running datam gateway. I'm building my own block templates and then I'm buying rented hash and I'm pointing it at my stratum gateway and I'm mining through ocean. So basically ocean is just coordinating the rewards but I'm building the actual blocks and deciding what's in them. Number six chooses transactions for the block template.

[00:03:09]That's what datam gate me gateway helps me to do along with bitcoin knots broadcast block candidates directly to the network. So the only thing I'm not doing at least at industrial strength level I run a bit sometimes I run a couple bit axes but hashing is something that I'm just buying I'm buying that computational service and so it's quite possible this is the amazing thing just with a start 9 server now that datam gateway and ocean exists it's quite possible to be a minor from home this is the rate I'm mining at currently I'm mining at approximately 5 pahash per second per day and this is not cloud mining we can go back over here it's listed under my Bitcoin uh address. And if we scroll down here, we can see that I've been hashing at about uh 4,000 5,000 terraash per second, which is about 5 pahash per second. And uh been finding blocks, you can see the blue here shows where I'm hashing. And the hash rate does move around quite a bit.

[00:04:00]But what Brains tries to do with this rented hash is keep you right around one pahash uh I'm sorry, five pedash per second. This is a real innovation. And when you combine datam gateway with oceanpoolled mining, you now have a much better situation for Bitcoin where you don't just have a few large regulated corporations deciding what goes in Bitcoin blocks. And Luke Dasher points out how this is working. Ocean doing what it set out to accomplish. Instead of two blocks made by the same pool, we get blocks made by two independent miners. Exactly the same as if they weren't using any pool at all. If we take a look at this, we can see this uh this logo shows that these were mined with ocean, but they're completely different block templates done by different uh different nodes. These blocks are relatively empty. This doesn't always this doesn't always happen, but maybe at this point there's just a lot of spam and a lot of non-monetary uh transactions. So, we can see actually three blocks here that were mined using ocean. Uh there's data factories, zeda, proof of work, and peak mining as well. So, this is the real the real revolution. People are still figuring this out. I had an exchange with Calamus056 where he wrote in my YouTube comment section the other day. Other than non KYC SATs, there's no reason to ever waste money on mining. My response, I strongly disagree. Mining also allows you to include your own transactions in blocks, keep blocks spam free, signal for soft forks, draw hash away from the big pools, and help decentralize Bitcoin mining. It also gives you a much better feel for how Bitcoin works. If you have your life savings in Bitcoin, you'd be crazy not to do at least a little mining. Calamus responds, "It does not.

[00:05:34]It would take you four years on average to find a block and in a pool you have no authority over the block contents.

[00:05:40]So, good luck with that." Then my response, Datam Gateway, which we've been talking about in this video, datam gateway allows you to pool mine with Ocean and still build your own block templates using your own node. Ocean just co coordinates payouts and you get paid from the Coinbase transaction. And then his response, but then you still have the same problem. it takes four years to actually be the one in the pool that finds a block. And I assume those calculators don't take into account previous hash rate trends. So in reality, it might be even 10 years. The point this misses though is that what we're trying to do is we're trying to help decentralized Bitcoin mining. And obviously one of us doing this cannot do it. But if many of us do it, we'll all be finding blocks together. We'll be drawing hash rate away from the large pools and we'll be using it to build our own block templates. Mining with Ocean for now. Hopefully, there'll be competitors as well that I can recommend. I'm not being paid or compensated in any way by Ocean or anyone who works there. If we take a look here, if you want to know your chances of finding a block, if you're doing solo mining, which is basically the same as if you're doing pulled mining, but with pulled mining, you get to share the rewards. I'm mining at five pedash per second. I click calculate, and we can see here that my estimate is one in every 300 one one in every 1,365 days. In other words, approximately four years. So, it is very, very hard to find a block. But the good news is because I'm mining with Ocean and doing poolled mining, I'm still getting paid out as other people in the pool find blocks.

[00:07:07]And then I can recycle those block rewards. I can recycle those SATs back into paying for more rented hash at uh at at brains. So, this is really something that's sort of self- sustaining. You should do it at a level that you can sustain. This is not something you want to do with your whole Bitcoin stack. But what you can do is you can commit to spending5 10 $15 a day. And that doesn't even have to be uh the the uh net amount. That could be uh the gross amount. If you want to learn how to do this, I'll put a link to a bunch of resources in the description notes below. I have this permal link bitcoin.com/mining that has a free tutorial how to mine bitcoin from home using start9.

[00:07:46]Hopefully we'll have a couple umbrell videos available soon. This is the same video that's available for free on YouTube, how to mine Bitcoin from home using Start 9. And then there's a slightly less sovereign version where using my friends datam gateway and I'll put a link to this as well as well as these other resources. There are different ways of doing this with Parma Node for example or uh some of the other other services here with Pyblock. You can use uh their stratum endpoint. If you enjoyed this video, be sure to hit the subscribe and like buttons. Hit the notification bell if you want to be notified when I publish my next video.

[00:08:18]and let me know your questions and comments in the comment section below.