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Chances are you hear the term bitcoin mining and your mind begins to wander to the Western fantasy of pickaxes, soil, and striking it rich. As it turns out, that analogy isnt too far off.
Far less glamorous but equally uncertain, bitcoin mining is performed by high-definition computers that solve complex computational math problems (read: so complicated they cannot be solved by hand). The fortune and work demanded by a computer to solve one of those problems is the equivalent of a miner striking gold in the ground while digging in a sandbox.
The result of bitcoin mining is twofold. To begin with, when computers resolve these complex math issues on the bitcoin network, they produce new bitcoin, not unlike when a mining operation extracts gold from 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 works in detail, lets begin with a process thats just 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. Thats because the U.S. dollar is backed by a central bank known as the Federal Reserve. In addition to a bunch of other responsibilities, the Federal Reserve regulates the production of new money and prosecutes the use of counterfeit currency. .
Even digital payments using the U.S. dollar are backed by a central authority. When you make an online order using your debit or charge card, by way of example, that transaction is processed by means of a payment processing company such as Mastercard or Visa. In addition to recording your transaction history, these companies affirm that transactions are not fraudulent, which is one reason your credit or debit card could be suspended while traveling. .
Bitcoin, on the other hand, is not controlled by a central authority. Instead, bitcoin is endorsed by millions of computers across the world called miners. This network of computers performs the identical function as the Federal Reserve, Visa, and Mastercard, but using a couple of key differences. Like the Federal Reserve, Visa, and Mastercard, bitcoin miners record transactions and check their accuracy.
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When someone makes a purchase or sale using bitcoin, we call 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 with no institutions by clumping transactions together in cubes and adding them into 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 accurate. (More on the magic of the way this happens in a second.) In particular, bitcoin miners be certain that bitcoin are not being reproduced, a unique quirk of electronic currencies called double-spending.
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Once you spend $20 in the shop, that invoice is in the clerks hands. With digital currency, however, it's a different story. .
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If the numbers were identical, the clerk would know the money had been duplicated. This analogy is similar to what a bitcoin miner does when they confirm new transactions. .
With as many as 600,000 purchases and sales occurring in a single day, nevertheless, verifying each of these transactions can be a great deal of work for miners, which gets at one other key difference between bitcoin miners and the Federal Reserve, Mastercard, or Visa. As compensation for their efforts, miners are awarded bitcoin whenever they include a new block of transactions to the blockchain.
In 2009, it had been 50. In 2013, it was 25, in the time of writing it's 12.5, and sometime in the middle of 2020 it will halve to 6.25. .
At this speed of halving, the entire number of bitcoin in circulation will approach a limit of 21 million, making the currency more scarce and link valuable over time but also more costly for miners to make.
Here is the catch. In order for bitcoin miners to actually earn bitcoin from verifying transactions, two things have to occur. First, they need to verify 1 megabyte (MB) worth of transactions, which can technically be as little as 1 transaction but are far more often several thousand, depending on how much information each transaction stores.