bitcoins & litecoins

[Stickfight]

Mining? You tech geeks have me confused

Every Bitcoin transaction is broadcast peer-to-peer fashion to all computers that want to receive them. Transactions are validated by those computers doing some mathematical work on them. The computer that completes the math on a particular block of transactions broadcasts the results peer-to-peer, those results are validated by those peers and accepted. As part of the process of doing all that math (it is a lot) some small amount of bitcoins is 'mined' and belong to the computer that finished the work first.

In the early stages people did this on their home computers and with unused CPU time in server farms. Then GPU mining became popular because GPUs can perform that math faster. Today most all bitcoin mining is done by purpose built computing devices that, down to circuit boards, are designed to do the exact math required as fast as possible. The math takes more and more calculations to complete over time so this trend isn't going to change.

 

[hoosierdoc]

Man Throws Away 7,500 Bitcoins, Now Worth $7.5 Million « CBS DC

d'oh!

 

[Jludo]

Man Throws Away 7,500 Bitcoins, Now Worth $7.5 Million « CBS DC

d'oh!

Was having this debate with my brother earlier.
Do you go sifting through the landfill to find the treasure chest? He thinks it's well worth a try, I say finding it is the same odds as winning money in the lottery.