What is bitcoin

Bitcoin was invented in 2009 by a person (or group) who called himself Satoshi Nakamoto. His stated goal was to create “a new electronic cash system” that was “completely decentralized with no server or central authority.” After cultivating the concept and technology, in 2011, Nakamoto turned over the source code and domains to others in the bitcoin community, and subsequently vanished.

By design, bitcoin supply is limited to 21 million coins of which 18.77 million have already been mined. This makes bitcoin scarce and controls the inflation that might occur if there was an unlimited supply of the cryptocurrency.

Bitcoin was built with a distributed digital record in mind called a blockchain. Blockchain is a type of public ledger — a digital system for recording transactions and related data in multiple places at one time. Blocks in a blockchain are units that contain data about every transaction, including the date, time, value, buyer and seller, and an identifying code for each exchange.

It is important to emphasize that the best way to store bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies is a hardware wallet. Some of the best hardware wallets can be found her

Blockchain is designed to make it extremely difficult to hack the system or forge the data stored on it, thereby making it secure and immutable. Each computer in a blockchain network has a copy of the ledger to prevent single points of failure. If one block is changed, then all the other blocks in the distributed ledger must be changed. Blockchain is a decentralized technology, meaning it is not controlled by any one organization. In addition, identifying codes make it difficult to fraudulently produce blocks.

While the idea that anyone can edit the blockchain might sound risky, it’s actually what makes Bitcoin trustworthy and secure. In order for a transaction block to be added to the Bitcoin blockchain, it must be verified by the majority of all Bitcoin holders, and the unique codes used to recognize users’ wallets and transactions must conform to the right encryption pattern.

What Is Crypto Mining?

Most people think of crypto mining simply as a way of creating new coins. Crypto mining, however, also involves validating cryptocurrency transactions on a blockchain network and adding them to a distributed ledger. Most importantly, crypto mining prevents the double-spending of digital currency on a distributed network.

Like physical currencies, when one member spends cryptocurrency, the digital ledger must be updatedby debiting one account and crediting the other. However, the challenge of a digital currency is that digital platforms are easily manipulated. Bitcoin’s distributed ledger, therefore, only allows verified miners to update transactions on the digital ledger. This gives miners the extra responsibility of securing the network from double-spending.

Meanwhile, new coins are generated to reward miners for their work in securing the network. Since distributed ledgers lack a centralized authority, the mining process is crucial for validating transactions. Miners are, therefore, incentivized to secure the network by participating in the transaction validation process that increases their chances of winning newly minted coins.

In order to ensure that only verified crypto miners can mine and validate transactions, a proof-of-work (PoW) consensus protocol has been put into place. PoW also secures the network from any external attacks.

Proof-of-Work

Crypto mining is somewhat similar to mining precious metals. While miners of precious metals will unearth gold, silver, or diamonds, crypto miners will trigger the release of new coins into circulation. For miners to be rewarded with new coins, they need to deploy machines that solve complex mathematical equations in the form of cryptographic hashes. A hash is a truncated digital signature of a chunk of data. Hashes are generated to secure data transferred on a public network. Miners compete with their peers to zero in on a hash value generated by a crypto coin transaction, and the first miner to crack the code gets to add the block to the ledger and receive the reward.

Each block uses a hash function to refer to the previous block, forming an unbroken chain of blocks that leads back to the first block. For this reason, peers on the network can easily verify whether certain blocks are valid and whether the miners who validated each block properly solved the hash to receive the reward.

Over time, as miners deploy more advanced machines to solve PoW, the difficulty of equations on the network increases. At the same time, competition among miners rises, increasing the scarcity of the cryptocurrency as a result.

It is important to emphasize that the best way to store bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies is a hardware wallet. Some of the best hardware wallets can be found her