I have a decent idea of how network and network protocols work

Basically every instance of a bitcoin wallet has a complete record of all transactions ever. When a new transaction is done, the changes are quickly copied to everyone else's wallet ledger over the internet. New bitcoins are handed out in a raffle meant to mimic a real economy. The more computer power you donate to the bitcoin system (by mining), the more tickets you have for the raffle.

>>59797078
How is it meant to scale? You clearly won't be able to story whole history of all transaction on every client's computer.

>>59797117
That's exactly what they do. This has been a growing issue. The official name for it is the blockchain. The current blockchain, according to Google, is about 15gb, growing slowly. To have any computer or server on the network that has a higher priority than any other would be against the entire philosophy of bitcoin. I'm not sure if they have or are trying to come up with better ways to compress or format it.

>>59797165
Welp. And to think I was impressed by bitcoin at some point.

>>59797209
The only thing to be impressed by is the community of people who keep it alive as a real flowing economy. In a computery manner, it's really nothing special. In a practical sense, it is an incredible application of computer sciences concepts onto real life.

>>59797245
Is it incredible? It's literally just a log of all transactions replicated to every client, protected, I assume, by generous cryptographic signing. It won't scale. Bitcoin doesn't have that big userbase right now; if it becomes really popular it will choke and die. It would be impressive if it could scale and become an alternative to real money. It can't.

>>59797293
Its a lot more popular than it seems like you think it is, and with the increases in storage technology what makes you think the blockchain will ever get to an unmanagable size even if it is more widely accepted? Also its essentially a different representation of how modern banks operate. They have numbers on their systems that dictate transactions, if bitcoin became significantly more widely used it would be trivial to establish a network of reputable blockchain holders so that if, god forbid, it got to 1TB you would go there to to validate. It seems like youre deliberately trying to undermine btc but i cant really figure out why.

>>59797374
It would be popular when people pay for their groceries with bitcoin. Modern banks don't operate by having clients work with whole transaction history of the whole world.

>>59797413
hence
> it would be trivial to establish a network of reputable blockchain holders

if you go to your banks website and they tell you how much money you have you probably trust it, in fact faith in those numbers is what our entire financial system is built upon.

Also people do pay for their groceries with bitcoin
https://www.forbes.com/sites/rakeshsharma/2014/02/11/use-your-smartphone-to-buy-groceries-in-bitcoins/#2160331b3ae2

>>59797481
The point of bitcoin as it is right now is that there's no need for trust. The amount of people paying for groceries with bitcoins is tiny compared to how many pay with real money.

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So it's a log of transaction stored on everyones computer as a "wallet"

So where does the original bitcoin that is entered in to this wallet come from? The wallet keeps logs of one person give a bitcoin to another person I'm assuming.

>>59797570
There is a mathematical problem and it is known that there is a certain amount of solutions to it. Solutions themselves are not known. You can use your computer to look for solutions. When you find one, you use it as a bitcoin.

At least that's my understanding of it.

>>59797117
It doesn't scale well. It is an ongoing issue with the blockchain. Compared to the ATM system it isn't even in the same ballpark.

>>59797649
>>59797481
>>59797374
>>59797293
>>59797165
If I'm not mistaken, Bitcoin doesn't keep track of who has how many bitcoins, it tracks transactions. Why can't they trim and backup the oldest transactions? Is it because there's still super old "unspent" bitcoins?

>>59797513
right but you're disparaging the system because it can' scale properly, I'm explaining how it could evolve to scale. The 'point' of bitcoin isnt theres no need for trust, it's decentralization which != never ever having a number of trusted sources for transaction data.

>>59797745
There are various degrees of decentralization. Bitcoin as it is is a system where no user is greater than any other.
The Internet is decentralized, and that means fuck all because there are points of failure.

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>>59797624
>There is a mathematical problem and it is known that there is a certain amount of solutions to it.

and where are these solutions stored? Aren't they themselves the actual "bitcoin?"

or are they stored in every wallet and encrypted with the mathematical problem

>>59797833
>and where are these solutions stored?
Well, in the transaction log, obviously.

The mathematical problem is a part of bitcoin protocol, designed by its author, and is not stored anywhere (apart from in program code and documentation).

>>59797833
the solutions arent preconfigured and stored, otherwise if someone got hold of them the system would collapse

>>59797904
So if we assume the bitcoin problem is 8x8 and can be solved by:
4x2x4x2
8+8+8...
2^3*2^3
2^6
et cetera
every solution to the 8x8 is a bitcoin?

>>59798027
In a sense, yes. The main trait of the problem is it's very easy to check if a proposed solution is correct, but very difficult to find such solution.

>>59798027
the bitcoin problem is:
The proof-of-work requires miners to find a number called a nonce, such that when the block content is hashed along with the nonce, the result is numerically smaller than the network's difficulty target.


so if there are multiple nonce , then..yes?

>>59798027
>>59798099
The "problem" that miners are solving is taking the block (a group of transactions) and adding a nonce (a random piece of data) to it until the hash of the block and the nonce has a certain number of leading 0s (determined by the network difficulty). The miner then broadcasts this block and the nonce and everyone else can verify that the hash does indeed have a certain number of leading 0s.

>>59798150
>>59798105
>>59798027
so how does the bitcoins possesion is protected if the calculated data is broadcasted to the network?
another question:
how does bitcoin network prevent the reuse of bitcoins? does bitcoins gets altered to be spent again? if yes, how does this alteration process work?

>>59798466
the log that is shared by everyone
"le bitcoin chain"

>>59798466
thats what the blockchain does