Bit Coin Mining

[DennisE]

Just wondering if anyone in club knows what its all about.

I read a article about it and still don't understand what its all about.
Seems to be money with no backing but where does the mining come in?
Where does the bit coin go and how is it spent?
Something about verifying computer time use and so forth.
Don't want to do it just want to understand what is about and how it works.
Someone that's into it could probably explain it in plain English face to face better as the written article is just confusing to me.

Dennis E

[grega]

Hi Dennis,

I'm not a user of bitcoin or expert, but I've read a few things about it, and watched a few good youtube videos. These days, you can learn almost anything on youtube.

Anyway, here's my impression of what it's about, what it is:

> It's about the exchange of valuable "tokens" (really just a special computer file/record) WITHOUT the overhead of taxes, excess fees, regulation and tracking (aka "secret money").

> Besides the advantages above, the "value" is in part created because creating Bitcoins is hard to do . . . and there is a limit on the supply . . . so it's scarce.

> A powerful, energy sucking GPU is needed in a well cooled Tower PC to run the mining program. The program is designed to generate fractions of a Bitcoin via the solving very complex math problems.

So the above is the why & what it is . . . the how can be explained better via an expert who actually "mines" and manages Bitcoin production, storage, exchange, etc.

EDIT: one more note - - the "where" it is spent is fascinating. Some retail stores will accept Bitcoin (via a PC transfer record), but mostly it's the dark-web for various services, devices, etc. It is slowly morphing into a more mainstream listing of buyers, but, it will take a while. It is NOT supported/backed by Governments or by "most" Corporations (yet). Maybe never will be. Some Bitcoin exchanges have been hacked, and the data (& value) has been permanently lost.