Bitcoin Mining Work
Categories: Bitcoin
In the Bitcoin ecosystem, there is a network of miners who use their CPUs to process transactions.
Once a user who intends to send Bitcoin enters the public address, number of Bitcoins to be sent and affixes the private key to generate signature, the encrypted information is then sent to the network of miners who are given the task to verify whether there is sufficient balance to transfer and authenticate the transaction.
The faster the CPU of the miner, the greater are the chances that they will verify and that miner gets rewarded in Bitcoins for facilitating the transfer.
Here the miner’s job is only to provide CPU power, which automatically runs the Bitcoin program to validate Bitcoin transfers. There is no manual intervention by the Bitcoin miner.
Once the transaction is processed by a Bitcoin miner, this number of transactions is then broadcasted to the network of miners who get the copy or download of the same block.
These blocks through a timestamp mechanism are stored in a sequential or chronological order forming a blockchain. Each miner in the network is supposed to have the updated and complete copy of the ledger or the blockchain if they want to facilitate transfer and earn Bitcoins.
The program is built in such a way that the ledger or the blockchain is automatically updated.
As per the original whitepaper on Bitcoin, the probability of hackers tampering the blockchain is next to zero due to the copy of updated ledger each miner carries. If someone is trying to tamper or hack the ledger by any means to gain unfair advantage, then immediately the miner is considered invalid and fails to process transactions until they have a copy of the untampered ledger.