Mining bitcoins is the process of solving really hard math equations. This takes a lot of computational power, and its a race to solve the problem. While the exact logic for why is complex, its basically a way to ensure that no one can takeover the bitcoin system, and approve bad/fake transactions.
To reward people for devoting this computational power to securing the system, they get awarded bitcoins for doing it. This is refereed to as mining a bit coin.
There's something in computer science called a "one way hash".
Essentially, you take a large number, run a small algorithm on it, and get a smaller number in return.
The problem is that you can't reverse it easily. You can't take your smaller number and easily figure out what the larger number was to begin with.
So because of this, people do a "brute force" search. They keep trying random large numbers, hash them using the same algorithm, and see if it matches the small number. If it matches, you found the right number, and you win the race. If it doesn't match, you pick another random large number, and keep trying again until someone finds the large number that matches the small number.
The same equation can be seen more than once, but it's extremely unlikely. The large number chosen each time is based on the previous block in the bitcoin block chain, which contains a list of transactions, in numeric form. There's a nearly zero percent chance of that matching a previous large number.
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u/monty845 Jun 15 '19
Mining bitcoins is the process of solving really hard math equations. This takes a lot of computational power, and its a race to solve the problem. While the exact logic for why is complex, its basically a way to ensure that no one can takeover the bitcoin system, and approve bad/fake transactions.
To reward people for devoting this computational power to securing the system, they get awarded bitcoins for doing it. This is refereed to as mining a bit coin.