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Chances are you listen to the phrase bitcoin mining and your mind begins to wander to the Western fantasy of pickaxes, dirt, and striking it rich. As it turns out, that analogy isnt too far away.
Far less glamorous but equally uncertain, bitcoin mining is performed by high-definition computers which solve complex computational math problems (read: so complex they cannot be solved by hand). The fortune and work demanded by a computer to solve one of these problems is that the equivalent of a miner striking gold in the ground while digging in a sandbox.
The end result of bitcoin mining is twofold. First, when computers resolve these complex mathematics issues on the bitcoin network, they create new bitcoin, not unlike when a mining operation extracts gold in the ground. And second, by solving computational mathematics issues, bitcoin miners make the bitcoin payment network dependable and protected, by verifying its transaction information. .
Theres a fantastic chance all of that only made so much sense. In order to explain how bitcoin mining functions in greater detail, lets begin with a procedure thats a little bit closer to home: the regulation of printed currency.
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Consumers tend to anticipate printed currencies, at least in the United States. Feeling because the U.S. dollar is backed by a central bank called the Federal Reserve. In addition to a host of other responsibilities, the Federal Reserve modulates the production of new money and prosecutes the usage of counterfeit currency. .
Even digital payments using the U.S. dollar are backed with a central authority. When you make an online order using your debit card or charge card, by way of instance, that transaction is processed by means of a payment processing company like Mastercard or Visa. In addition to recording your transaction history, these companies affirm that transactions are not fraudulent, and that's one reason your credit or debit card may be suspended while traveling. .
Bitcoin, on the other hand, is not controlled by a central authority. Instead, bitcoin is backed by millions of computers across the world known as miners. This network of computers plays the identical function as the Federal Reserve, Visa, and Mastercard, but using a couple of important differences. Like the Federal review Reserve, Visa, and Mastercard, bitcoin miners record transactions and assess their accuracy.
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When someone makes a purchase or sale using bitcoin, we predict a transaction. Transactions made in-store and online are documented by banks, point-of-sale systems, and physical receipts. Bitcoin miners achieve the exact same effect without these institutions by clumping transactions together in cubes and adding them to a public document known as the blockchain. .
When bitcoin miners add a new block of transactions to the blockchain, a part of their job is to make sure that those transactions are true. (More on the magic of how this happens in a second) In particular, bitcoin miners be certain bitcoin are not being duplicated, a unique quirk of electronic currencies called double-spending.
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Once you spend $20 in the shop, that bill is in the clerks handson. With electronic currency, however, it is a different story. .
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When the numbers were identical, the clerk could know the money had been duplicated. This analogy is very similar to what a bitcoin miner does when they verify new transactions. .
With as many as 600,000 purchases and sales occurring in a single day, nevertheless, verifying every one of these transactions can be a great deal of work for miners, which gets at one other crucial difference between bitcoin miners and the Federal Reserve, Mastercard, or Visa. As compensation for their efforts, miners are awarded bitcoin whenever they add a new block of transactions to the blockchain.
In 2009, it was 50. In 2013, it had been 25, in the time of writing it's 12.5, and sometime in the center of 2020 it will halve to 6.25. .
At this rate of halving, the total number of bitcoin in circulation will approach a limit of 21 million, making the currency more scarce and valuable over time but also more costly for miners to make.
Here is the catch. In order for bitcoin miners to really earn bitcoin from verifying transactions, two things have to happen. To begin with, they must verify 1 megabyte (MB) worth of transactions, which can theoretically be as small as 1 transaction but are more often a few thousand, depending on how much information each transaction stores.