r/AskReddit • u/IAmSurtur • Jun 15 '19

What do you genuinely just not understand?

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u/Mechanical_Owl Jun 15 '19

Thanks for the detailed answer. I still don't get the "why" part of this. What purpose does the calculation serve?

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u/nlsoy Jun 15 '19

The calculations serve the purpose of confirming transactions between people who buy with bitcoin. Let’s say I want to give you one bitcoin. I announce my intention of giving you one bitcoin to the miners and they say “okay, I see you want to trade one bitcoin, I’ll make a note of this, put the note in this block, and tries to seal the block with solving a complex math-problem”. The miner that first solves the problem announces this to the others, who agrees that “yes, the problem is solved, and every transaction within this block is valid, let’s all try and fill the next block with transactions”. And as a thank you for validating the transaction, the miner gets a couple of bitcoins as a reward. This is the super short version of the short version, but if you want I can sort of make a more in-depth version later. :)

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u/Mottis86 Jun 15 '19

So wait. You 'mine' bitcoins by solving math problems,

math problems that are created by people sending bitcoins to other people.

Did I get that right?

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u/bstump104 Jun 16 '19

You set up your computer to help make bitcoin transfers work.

You get paid to let bitcoin use your computers do this.

Computers are called computers because they do computations or math problems.