A variety of hardware and software can be used to mine Bitcoin. When Bitcoin was first released, it was possible to mine it competitively on a personal computer; however, as it became more popular, more miners joined the network, which lowered the chances of being the one to solve the hash. You can still use your personal computer as a miner if it has newer hardware, but the chances of solving a hash individually are minuscule.

This is because you're competing with a network of miners that generate around 444 quintillion hashes (444 exa hashes), or random number generations, per second. Machines—called Application Specific Integrated Circuits (ASICs), have been built specifically for mining—can generate up to 335 trillion hashes per second. In contrast, a computer with the latest hardware hashes around 100 megahashes per second (100 million).6