This article has been translated from English to Gen Z Slang.
What’s mining in Bitcoin, tho? 🤔
“Mining” is when you put transactions on the blockchain and make sure it’s all legit. 🔒✨
All those nerdy nodes that vibe with mining are called miners. They’re the backbone of the Bitcoin squad. 💪 As they hustle, they create new bitcoins that are basically up for grabs. 🎉
Wanna get a 100 emoji understanding of mining? Try imagining Bitcoin without mining. 🤯
Here’s the tea.
Think of this like a file.
This bad boy is chillin’ on a computer. 🖥️
Visualize this file like a Word doc, ya know?
We’re dubbing this file “blockchain”.
A blockchain flexes like a gossip magazine of “blocks”. 😉
I’m gonna get all nerdy about blockchain later, but right now, scoop on that each block has a transaction bundle. 📚
Now, peep the Bitcoin Network.
All these computers are vibing together online, running that juicy Bitcoin software code. 📡
They’re standing around, sharing a copy of the same VIP file: the blockchain. 🗂️
Wanna slide a bitcoin to someone, or make sure someone else owns that bitcoin? You’d start a transaction. 💸
The transaction is just this line of data (feelin’ this purple vibe? 💜).
When you kick off a transaction, it gets beamed to a Bitcoin node. 🚀
If Bitcoin were chillin’ without mining, this one computer would just log the transaction right on the blockchain, like no big deal. 🤷
Then that computer would pass on the scoop to other nodes it’s linked up with, and they'd put the transaction data in their own files. 🔄
Those nodes keep the gossip going, sending the tea to every connected node while saving it to their files. 📁
And it keeps going…
This continues until the transaction has flip-flopped over the ENTIRE Bitcoin network. 🌐
And every node has logged it in their files. 🤝
So that’s a simple way of flexin’ a shared file or a shared transaction “ledger”. It’s the “distributed ledger” vibes. 😎
See how all the computers got that purple line (transaction) locked and loaded in their files (blockchain)? 💜
Once all the nodes have updated their gossip logs, ownership of the bitcoin is a done deal. 🙌
And that’s just a sneak peek at how a Bitcoin transaction rolls. 🙌 Congrats, you’re now a top-tier detective! 🔍✨
But there’s a plot twist…
Oh snap, there’s a snag in the digital matrix if we keep rolling this way. 😱
You’re gonna try to sell your bitcoin to this purple dude. 👾
So, you create a transaction to beam over some bitcoin to our purple dude. 💌💜
Then you shoot this transaction to a node on that side of the Bitcoin web. 🕸️
But let’s spill tea—you’re feeling a lil’ shady, and you think you can pull something slick. 🕶️
So sneaky, in fact, you whip up a SECOND transaction to beam that same bitcoin to a different homie, this red dude (on the other side). 🕵️♂️
And then you send this transaction off with the red dude to another network node. 🔴🔄
OMG, what even?! 😵
You’ve now got TWO separate transactions flying around the network, both trying to flex the SAME bitcoin! 🥴
All because this is a whole world of connected computers, scattered across the globe. 🌍
Wowza, the sneakiness is real. Congrats! You’ve leveled up in shady. 👏👏
Next, these two transactions are gonna start bouncin’ around the network, like whoa.
Some squad nodes will catch the purple transaction. Other squads will score the red transaction. 🔴🟣
In the visual scoop below, when a comp tries passing a red transaction, it already copped the purple transaction using this bitcoin, so it’s like, “Nah, reject.”
Which is legit, but here’s the plot twist…
Now you’ve got two DRAMA transactions battling it out on the network.
Remember, every terminal has to keep an identical file copy. 😶🌫️
None of these nodes can have a scoop with just a purple transaction or just a red transaction. Like, they all have to decide on one. 🕵️♀️
ALL terminals need to pick either the red transaction OR the purple transaction.
If Bitcoin kept chillin’ like this where transactions immediately slammed in the file, you’d have this double spend fiasco. 💥
But Bitcoin’s like, nah fam, we got this.
If you need a scene in video vibes, peep this dope YouTube vid from Learn Me a Bitcoin. A lil’ inspiration from this jammed-up lesson had to tap into this vid. 🎥✨
So what's the squad of computers gonna do to see which deal is the kind of 🔥 deal?
Mining to the rescue.⚡
Bitcoin squad won’t let the drama of conflicting deals flood the blockchain/Main File. 🤝
And this, my friend, is where mining hops in. 🚀