These aren't just any arbitrary math problems - eli5 a single very complex problem. Meta yeah, I'll upvote everything I like or feel is relevant. But if that's the case, bitcoins do eli5 know what problem to solve? Once you have found your block, you meta it to the network bitcoins claim your 50 BTC. I'm going all in, here.
This will not be accepted by Core unless they adopt a large blocks patch, but will be accepted by XT, and at this point there will effectively be two chains. Submit a new text post. They can look at everyone's transactions and add their own to the mix, as long as they adhere to the rules we've all agreed on. The top comment current explains mining pretty well, but doesn't really explain the merits of Bitcoin in an ELI5 way. The system isn't flawed. You can use Bitcoins to buy all sorts of goods and services online or even in-person, or you can sell them for whatever currency you use in your country.
You should eli5 consider looking for your question in the FAQ. In addition to generating bitcoins, meta can purchase them online through several websites bitcoins regular currency. Somebody pays for it because it's good for something? This is called the transaction fee, and it's kinda like a tip. Why don't you do a search before chastising others, jackass.
But to be fair to Jeff Garzik, there's politics involved in this thing being driven by people who don't understand software development, so that bit of stupidity is understandable.
But this just shows why 5 year olds are smarter than a group of executives in suits. For all of you though, SegWit2X has two very different things it's going to do at two different points in time.
First, the miners are going to try to activate SegWit alone, before the August 1st deadline set by the user lead movement known as UASF. You have two choices. One is to do nothing. SegWit is backwards compatible to all wallets. If you have a wallet that will support SegWit itself you also don't need to do anything because SegWit2X is actually trying to activate SegWit using the same code on your wallet.
However, to ensure you are also enforcing SegWit activation you may choose to run either a UASF enforcing node or, if they make one available, a SegWit2X enforcing node. Again, an aside from me, UASF nodes have had very few lines of code changed and the only change is that after August 1st, a block must signal in favour of SegWit to continue to be considered valid. I myself will be running a UASF node the whole time.
I think that's reliable software. I know what it's going to do when it activates. And, the more of us that run it, the more incentive there is for none of the miners to betray their pledge to activate SegWit. I would not be surprised if many of the miners who have pledged support of SegWit2X actually instead choose to run the UASF because it does the same thing with way less risk of failure. People will rejoice in the streets and there will be much merriment.
Everyone on both sides of the scaling debate will declare victory. The price of bitcoin might go lunar. Where you didn't have to do anything at all to get SegWit, you will have to take action to support a hard fork. In fact, a hard fork requires every single node to take action. Unlike a soft fork, a hard fork is not backwards compatible.
SegWit2X will need to release software for every user to download and install and run for the 2MB hard fork to be universally supported.
The software task ahead of the SegWit2X team which is really just poor Jeff Garzik and a few kind and not-so-kind code reviewers is very hard. NP-complete has a very specific meaning, and you cannot infer that the problem is NP-complete from the limited information given here.
Maybe I read his comment wrong but I thought he implied that this scenario was only similar to NP-complete, which albiet with limited knowledge sounds about right to me. In either case you're the first person to give a semi-explanation of why his comment was incorrect rather than just down vote. Please help, I really don't understand this. Where do the problems come from? Does some organization make the problem, then assign the number of bitcoins to it?
And how to bitcoins become real world currency? Once you have one, what do you do with it? Somebody pays for it because it's good for something? Bitcoins transactions are stored in a public ledger called the blockchain, which is made up of a long string of "blocks".
Every ten minutes or so, someone on the Bitcoin network generates a new block. Each block contains, among other things, a record of all new transactions, a single transaction sending 50 BTC from nowhere to somewhere arbitrary, and a reference to the block that came immediately before it. It also sort of contains an answer to the problem you mentioned. The problem is actually making the hash of the block itself include a certain number of consecutive zeros.
Changing the contents of the block a little will change the hash value a lot, so this is done simply by adding random data to the end of the block and trying over and over again until the hash has enough zeros.
An agreed-upon equation is used to determine how many zeros are needed, in such a way that it will always take ten minutes of work to get the answer, regardless of how many people are trying.
Once you have found your block, you send it to the network and claim your 50 BTC. Each computer on the network can verify that you've solved the problem correctly by hashing your block a single time, and will immediately move on to the next block.
Bitcoins are a currency because people agree that they are, the same way that French people think the Euro is a currency or Canadians think the Dollar is a currency. I suppose you could say that Bitcoins are "backed" as in gold-backed by the electricity consumed in mining them, but that kind of backing doesn't really mean anything in practice. You can use Bitcoins to buy all sorts of goods and services online or even in-person, or you can sell them for whatever currency you use in your country.
From my understanding, the problems are generated automatically based off of the previous solutions. People use it as currency because it's easy to transfer, secure, and non-reversible in other words, once you send someone a bitcoin, you can't get it back. Are the math problems in any way significant, or is this just a way of regulating the rate at which new currency enters the market? It seems that the value of Bitcoins is still fairly arbitrary and likely driven by the people with the most Bitcoins or with the most control over them.
Is this not the case? I guess you could say that. An exceptionally wealthy person could significantly influence the market by buying or selling a large sum at once. A Bitcoin is worth whatever the average person is willing to pay for one. It's a matter of supply vs.
But I am skeptical when Bitcoins are presented as some sort of sensible alternative currency. The value of bitcoin is completely in network effects. It's only valuable because lots of people have them and a lot of people will exchange stuff for them. If you are looking for another gold standard, this isn't it. Bitcoin makes it possible for someone in Zimbabwe to exchange with someone in the Ukraine without banks or governments getting in the way.
How did bitcoins ever become valuable? I assume money first started as sort of I. But for bitcoins, it seems like "money" is being generated spontaneously. I understand that eventually that will become a nonissue, since they will be valuable simply because they're desirable, and vice versa. Still, how did this ever build steam? At some point these bitcoins must have been worthless The fee's are negligible when he was trapped in a snowstorm, to send Euro for only 8 American dollars I know bitcoin is used for less-than-respectable purchases on Tor and such.
So that's one reason. It's hard to trace though not untraceable and since it isn't based on any country's currency it isn't subject to any nation's rules. There is "The Question" which changes every time someone gets the last "The Question" right. When one of these groups solves it, they get the "worth" of that question, and a new "The Question" is created based on the answer of the old "The Question"?
How many people are mining at any given time? Is there like, 3 or 4 really successful miners or are there thousands each with a legitimate chance of getting "The Question" right? So sorry, do I have this right? It's more of a lottery, and everyone trying to answer the question is really playing the powerball with different numbers until they find one that wins.
It's worth 50 bitcoins, plus any transaction fees that are in the transactions you processed. According to the wiki a lone person would take about a month to happen upon an answer, so there are mining pools where each person contributing gets a share of the reward when an answer is found.
This is adjusted by the software every once in a while I think it is 2 weeks. It is calculated from the previous question block , and the transactions in the block being computed.
So miners create their own question and attempt to solve it. When a miner solves their block's question they show it to everyone. If they are the first ones to do it then they win. What is stopping someone like Bill Gates, who is vastly wealthy and has a ton of computing power behind him, from just going in, using all his resources and solving all of the block problems, and getting all the bitcoins?
There are less than 65 other postings. I'm sure there's more to discuss about the topic There are no posts that I could find that simply explained bitcoin. Why don't you do a search before chastising others, jackass. We probably average two questions a day here on the topic. Did you actually dig through all of them and not find anything? You did not tell the OP to sift through hundreds of post in the hope that he may find something. You snidely said to do a search, which would provide little or no help.
Reddit search is a joke. You were disingenuous at best, but I think you just like being a dick. I can't search on mobile easily, so decided to just post it anyway. You see, there's this system in place on this website where you can decide what content makes it to the top. This is called up voting and downvoting. When you see something you don't like on here, what you do is downvote and move on. Much more efficient than bitching over things that don't matter, like how many times a question is asked every day on a website.
In a perfect world, up voting and down voting would be enough to keep a subreddit's quality high. But in reality, it's incredibly rare for a post to be downvoted for reasons such as being a repost or not being subreddit appropriate.
Naturally, this is a more significant problem with larger subs. Point is, the submitter has the largest impact on sub quality along with the mods, if they can act without causing a witchhunt. I don't see the problem with reposts. About half of the pictures I see nowadays that are complained about as being reposts are things that I've never seen or read about before. When I see something that I've seen before, I understand that the first time I saw it was most likely not the first time it was ever posted.
People like you destroy reddit with all the spam the submit and because they don't truly understand how reddit works. The voting system is flawed since there are people like you who don't give a shit about rules and guidelines and will upvote anything. Since when is reddit destroyed? I don't see any problems with the site if there is a problem, why do you still visit?
And yeah, I'll upvote everything I like or feel is relevant. What's the problem with that? I mean, I thought we were here to enjoy ourselves, not to bicker over reposts and horrible people who break the sacred rules.
I've never heard of such seriousness over a website meant for entertainment. The system isn't flawed. It's a reflection of the opinions and preferences of the majority. If people like something, but 50 don't, why is it so bad that the system allows for that post to gain even more popularity?
Why should we bring down that which appeals to the most people? If I find a post that I absolutely hate that is on the front page, I don't freak out about the quality of submissions and how they're destroying the site. I just move on from that post to something I do like. Because it's not a rule violation-- and the community can decide what belongs on the front page.
If they'd like more bitcoin, that is what they will receive. But I - personally - wouldn't bother if there were a stricter moderation in But let me tell you that you mods do just fine in here and I know that there would be more damage if you moderated more strictly and would get called nazi mods.
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Want to add to the discussion? Initial concept Imagine you're at a table with some friends. Mining Every so often, when someone in the group solves a that really hard math problem, that person tells the others of their triumph. That briefly describes "mining". Transactions A transaction is when someone sends money to someone else. Blockchain Whenever someone sends money creates a transaction and their send is truthful, there's a hash created.
Getting Bitcoin When someone new wants to join in so that they can use the money, too, they request a copy of all of the notes -- the blockchain -- and thus have their own copy of the public ledger.
Would GTX not work I don't pay for electricity. It's a good time. To improve the chances of getting these rare bitcoins, some people: Buy graphics cards that are especially good at math Pool their resources with others and split the profits In addition to generating bitcoins, you can purchase them online through several websites using regular currency.
Can you buy things with them? If so, like what?