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Kind of like the way thousands of people monitor any given Wikipedia page to ensure its accuracy.
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Back to the blockchain, with blockchain, every new transaction comes in the form of a block that's permanently linked to the one before it.
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And it's connected to the next one, and so on. So if a bad actor tried to tamper with one of these blocks, it could destroy the entire chain.
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And many computers on the network think about those. Wikipedia editors would notice that something went wrong. And here's where Bitcoin mining comes in.
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Lots of computers are working to maintain this network approved transactions and hold the network accountable without the help of a middleman like a bank.
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It takes a lot of computing energy to maintain this network of transactions and records. So the network rewards the people to help keep it running. those are the Bitcoin miners.
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So when a computer helps maintain the Bitcoin network, it receives a Bitcoin in return, but there isn't an unlimited supply of Bitcoin.
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Instead, the Bitcoin rulebook states that there are just 21 million Bitcoin available, and in part it's that scarcity that drives the value of Bitcoin.
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It's easy to get caught up in the excitement over Bitcoin, but the real innovation here is with blockchain technology. it can be used for so much more than just verifying Bitcoin transactions and other cryptocurrencies.
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Think about how we could cut out middle men in many industries and use it to verify health records, Legal documents in Private Securities. Bitcoin is really just the beginning.