# Probability of finding a valid block when cryptocurrency mining

Today I learned that for BTC, the probability of a hash being valid is approximately 1/(D*2^32), whereas D denotes to the difficulty. I was wondering if this is also the case for other cryptocurrencies or if this is something specific to BTC or the SHA-256 hash algorithm? If it is different for other cryptocurrencies, are there similar formulas for the probability of a hash being valid?

• This is not really cryptography specific, probably better on the Bitcoin stackexchange. I've asked a moderator to migrate the question there. That said, this is definitely a property of Bitcoin's particular algorithm choices, one can trivially design a different difficulty function. But I'm not a cryptocurrency expert, so I don't know what difficulty functions are actually in use for various coins. – SAI Peregrinus Oct 19 at 14:00
• @SAIPeregrinus Note that Bitcoin has somewhat recently changed their policy to only accept bitcoin related questions. So they likely won't appreciate such a general question and given that it is about the cryptographic mechanics of cryptocurrencies, I'm inclined to believe it should be on-topic here. Reference – SEJPM Oct 19 at 15:10
• Some cryptocurrencies don't even mine. So yeah, there's that. – Maarten Bodewes Oct 19 at 21:52