| Paatar said: Could someone in layman’s terms explain “mining†to me? I’ve tried to understand it but I just can’t. How does it get “mined� What’s the process? Why does it consume energy? What’s using energy to mine it? |
A combination of my recollection and some speculation (so take this with a grain of salt) tells me that mining is essentially verifying Bitcoin transactions, for which you earn some yourself. Verifying the transactions is dependent on previous transactions, so the more transactions there are, the more effort it takes to verify a transaction. Essentially this means that as time goes on, it takes more and more to verify transactions, i.e. mine Bitcoin (and it's called mining probably because you get some as well when doing so). As to why it consumes energy, it's because it's done using some heavy computations that only get heavier, and the computations are done by physical hardware (i.e. computers) that consume energy.
And yes, I'd like to be informed if I'm accidentally spreading misinformation - and no, I'm not particularly interested in hearing a more detailed version of this.
