<p>Technically, the nonce is just 4 bytes that are ignored. There's no reason why the block couldn't contain "Nick" in ASCII, or somebody's phone number. </p>

<p>That being said:</p>

<ol>
<li>the fastest way to mine is to start with a nonce of all 0's, then increment it.</li>
<li>an easier way to embed data into the blockchain is to use fields in the coinbase.</li>
</ol>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2013-04-23T17:24:10.720Z
So are there any blocks with letters in the nonce? I understand your 2 points, would it increase the probability of solving a block if your miner actually incremented 0-9 then a-z and A-Z, etc?
pinhead
CC BY-SA 3.0
2013-04-23T17:29:41.880Z
@pinhead `So are there any blocks with letters in the nonce?` Probably. [One in every thousand blocks](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%2852%2F256%29%5E4) has a nonce of all letters. There are 200 thousand.
Nick ODell
CC BY-SA 3.0
2013-04-23T17:18:33.137Z
2013-04-23T17:18:33.137Z
Nick ODell
<p>The nonce is an arbitrary string of bits with no particular meaning. Typically they are converted into an unsigned integer for convenience. Every possible set of nonce bits has a corresponding integer in this representation.</p>

<p>To get letter in a nonce, you'd have to present the bits in the nonce in some encoding scheme that had some way to encode letters. There is no such scheme in common use.</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2013-04-24T00:22:56.967Z
2013-04-24T03:03:28.923Z
2013-04-24T03:03:28.923Z
David Schwartz
<p>Since we're just trying to produce a specific hash output, couldn't the nonce also include letters or otherwise random bits?</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2013-04-23T18:07:47.077Z
it needs to be increasing, so using a number or more specifically a date makes this easier
Loourr
<mining-technical-details><nonce>
Does the nonce have to be a number?
pinhead
# Does the nonce have to be a number?

(Asked by: username_0 on 2013-04-23)

Since we're just trying to produce a specific hash output, couldn't the nonce also include letters or otherwise random bits?

**Tags:** mining-technical-details, nonce

> **Comments:**
> **username_1**: it needs to be increasing, so using a number or more specifically a date makes this easier  

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## 2 answers

### Answer by username_3 on 2013-04-24. Score: 5 | Accepted answer

The nonce is an arbitrary string of bits with no particular meaning. Typically they are converted into an unsigned integer for convenience. Every possible set of nonce bits has a corresponding integer in this representation.

To get letter in a nonce, you'd have to present the bits in the nonce in some encoding scheme that had some way to encode letters. There is no such scheme in common use.


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### Answer by username_2 on 2013-04-23. Score: 3

Technically, the nonce is just 4 bytes that are ignored. There's no reason why the block couldn't contain "Nick" in ASCII, or somebody's phone number.

That being said:

1. the fastest way to mine is to start with a nonce of all 0's, then increment it.
2. an easier way to embed data into the blockchain is to use fields in the coinbase.

> **Comments:**
> **username_0**: So are there any blocks with letters in the nonce? I understand your 2 points, would it increase the probability of solving a block if your miner actually incremented 0-9 then a-z and A-Z, etc?  
> **username_2**: @username_0 `So are there any blocks with letters in the nonce?` Probably. [One in every thousand blocks](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%2852%2F256%29%5E4) has a nonce of all letters. There are 200 thousand.  

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