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[–] ADaniels 0 points 1 point (+1|-0) ago 

Verifying transactions, which they are rewarded coin for, it’s how you have an incentive for getting a strong backbone of processing power to protect your decentralized network since you can’t have any central servers or it would comprimise the security.

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[–] lkjdfglkjdfgjk 0 points 2 points (+2|-0) ago  (edited ago)

All cryptocoins are decentralized systems and need a way to solve "the double spend problem". That is when you try to send money to Bobs wallet. It either succeeds or fails, and the whole world need to agree to if the transaction goes through or not. Otherwise everything breaks down as in the same money can be in many wallets at once, and nobody can agree where anything is.

Bitcoin and most other cryptocoins solve this by something called mining or "proof of work". It basically means the person who is prepared to burn the most electricity gets to decide if that transaction goes through.

Its super wasteful. Billions of dollars of electricity wasted on something that can be solved for free. The most elegant solution is the consensus protocol. That means that the people/institutions you trust get to decide what goes through. That costs nothing.

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[–] greenfascist 0 points 2 points (+2|-0) ago 

Hahaha.

Trust.

You are joking right?

I trust burning billions of dollars of electricity before I trust a bank.

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[–] Halstan 0 points 1 point (+1|-0) ago 

Interesting.

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[–] TheBuddha [S] 0 points 4 points (+4|-0) ago 

There is a finite number of coins. Not all of them are available, as they haven't been mined yet.

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[–] Halstan 1 point -1 points (+0|-1) ago 

Mine them from where? I guess I know much less about this then I thought.

[–] [deleted] 0 points 2 points (+2|-0) ago 

[Deleted]

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[–] jxfaith 0 points 2 points (+2|-0) ago  (edited ago)

To summarize, bit coin mining is the process of finding a cryptographically secure hash that encodes all pending transactions on the block chain. When such a hash is found, the miner is permitted to create an unsourced transaction (ie, create coins from nothing) and add it to a wallet of their choosing. The supply is only as finite as the technology, because an inability to create new hashes for the block chain will render the currency incapable of completing transactions.

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[–] lord_nougat 1 point 5 points (+6|-1) ago 

They have to extract the bit ore from pit mines in souteast asia. Then they smelt this bit ore into bitmetal, which is then processed further and extruded into a coin-like shape, forming bitcoins!

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[–] TheBuddha [S] 0 points 1 point (+1|-0) ago 

Mining is done by calculating hashes. It gets progressively difficult as the number of unmined coins decrease. This is known as proof of work. Google has better and more information.