Bitcoin Forum

All around the world there are thousands or millions of CPUs/GPUs grinding away on math equations in the hopes that they will "solve" one of them and reap the reward of 50 bitcoins. One thing that troubles me (and Ive yet to find the answer); who is this math being done for? I can't imagine all the CPU cycles and kilowatt hours of electricity are being wasted "just because", otherwise that would be an enormous waste of resources. This reminds me of the SETI project where you would install and app on your machine and it would utilize unused CPU cycles when your machine was idle to listed for alien communications. Who or what is the math behind the bitcoin being done for?

The math is being done to securely process the transactions made.

Read satoshi's original PDF file. It explains things best.

No, these are not being done for nothing, they are being done to secure the network.

Next, try the search tool.

http://forum.bitcoin.org/?topic=3770.0

That is one of many threads on the subject.

Why do people move dirt to find gold?  ;)

Why can't newbies read the forum or the wiki before asking the same questions?

The internet is new, give people a couple billion years to evolve!  ;D

This is my 2036th forum post.  At least 500 of those posts are me largely repeating myself.  It gets old.

I have used the search feature and I've read the wiki and either I didn't find the answer (as is the case with the thread you've linked to) or didn't understand what I read. Otherwise I wouldn't have asked. Some of you are being elitist assholes. This community WILL be inundated with n00bs as it gets more and more press coverage and becomes more popular. Some of the concepts involved are way beyond what the average person is even remotely capable of grasping.

Thanks for your help!

Its like Ender's Game. We're killing aliens.

Guys, the 'search elitism' and what-not isn't going to help people understand (and ultimately use) bitcoin. Yes, there may be 10 common questions you've answered 100 times before. But those questions have to be asked because bitcoin is such a revolutionary (and complicated) concept!

The computing power is being used to perform a simple cryptographic calculation (hash) trillions of times per second (across the whole network). Each resulting hash is compared to a very small number (target) which is related to the difficulty. If the hash is less than the target, you have found a valid block. The chance that each hash will yield a valid block is the same for all individuals, all that differs is the number of times per second you can check a new hash.

That's all that miners are doing, hashing and checking. It seems like it's a waste of energy, but I know of no other way to secure the network against double spend attacks in a distributed manner. Any "meaningful" computing would fail to be...

1) Difficult to counterfeit
2) Easy to verify

Wait, so how will transactions be verified once all 21M are out?

Long before that time, transaction fees will have become the norm, and taken over for the block reward as the primary economic incentive to participate.

There is no reciprocal relation between block reward and block production. Once all the coins are out, blocks will still be produced, without the reward, and the miners will rip their profit off of transaction fees.

We need a sticky faq with these simple questions right on the front page of the forum.

Wasn't eMansipater taking care of that or something?

Perhaps a mandatory FAQ, with a quiz at the end. :)

Excellent idea.  New users can't post until they can pass a fairly easy quiz, but can read whatever they like.

Thank you for your kind replies folks, I understand the maths concept now. Stickies for these things is a fantastic idea btw. One of those READ THIS BEFORE POSTING YOUR STUPID QUESTION threads would be most useful with perhaps the top 10 most often asked questions answered. It wouldn't stop all the dumb questions but it might help.

For what it's worth, I don't think the cranky old guys were too hard on you! You did get called a newbie, but that's about it. I've seen much worse on other forums for not searching (or not searching enough, etc.)!   :)

Where is all the dirt going? Who is it being moved for?

I always explain that just because it's not finding a new science discovery it still can be doing something very useful. Society needs more than medicine and new technology. It also needs a fair way of trading wealth. By doing the "math", Bitcoin is providing a brand new system that has never existed before. It can help society as well. 

Whenever I read somewhere that bitcoin is a pyramid scheme, I think of threads like this.

Potential "sucker": I don't get bitcoin.
Evil pyramid schemers: RTFM, cockface. Better yet, just fuck off.

The energy is not wasted.  It goes to feed the bitcoin gremlin.  The bitcoin gremlin likes to eat hash cycles.  If you provide the bitcoin gremlin with enough hash cycles, he will reward you with 50 bitcoins.

I like that idea...

The problem is that some people "get it" automatically, and others do not.

If you get it, you'll read these questions and wonder how the hell could someone be so stupid that they can read how it works and not understand how and why the hashing is done the way it is.  If you don't get it, the descriptions that work for the "get it" crowd are meaningless.

I've tried several times to think of better ways to say it, and I've got nothing.

Here's one:


Can we make this the official explanation? Pleeeeease?  ;D

[edited]

hahaha…  We could be.

I like the concept of bitcoin but questions like this are nagging me because my knowledge, not ignorance.

Requiring people to pass a test before posting sounds too much like church of scientology indoctrination to me.

Sure, people should read the fucking wikis and independently verify the information presented.  They should also use the search function.

I just don't see a problem with a question like the OP asked.  That's the kind of question there should be repeatedly asked.  Bitcoin will survive if it can withstand these kind of questions.

Scientific method should rule the day here. I'm not entirely convinced that it does.

I don't see a problem either.  We need to treat newcomers better.  When I saw the title of the thread, I knew it was "one of those threads," and I could have avoided reading it if I chose to do so.  This reminds me of when the general public first started to show up on "our" internet (primarily through AOL).  Most of us had a pretty elitist, RTFM attitude back then too, but it didn't really serve anyone well.  It takes more time to flame than it does to post a link, offer a simple explanation or simply click on to the next thread.

That may be the case, but I don't really see this particular thread as an example of poor treatment of newcomers. The second post answered the question. It was suggested the OP read Satoshi's PDF. Someone mentioned newbies not being able to search. There was a joke or two. Then the OP calls everyone an elitist asshole! If anything the OP is the one overreacting.

I've seen similar threads on other forums where it goes pages before the question is even answered, if at all! This was actually pretty tame.

About the best I can think of is that if the hashing function doesn't take 100% effort, cheating is no longer impossible.  When the hashing function is as hard as the global system can stand, it is mathematically certain that the block is legit, just as 2+2=4 is mathematically certain.

If there was some sort of useful work being done as a proxy for the hashing function, we are relying on a different, and unprovable, security scheme.

Right now, increases in hashing power directly translate into increased difficulty.  When we found a way to cheat at hashing (by using GPUs), hashing automatically became harder.  There is no reason to think that this property would hold for a proxy.

The problem is that eventually, people who know the answers to The Questions That Are Repeatedly Asked might get tired of answering them, and not. That leaves an opening for those who don't know the answers or think they do to provide official seeming misinformation, intentionally or no.

I was going to bitch about the fact that this frequently asked question is not answered in the FAQ (https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/FAQ). And then it hit me that it would be more proactive to just answer the damn question (https://en.bitcoin.it/w/index.php?title=FAQ&diff=8562&oldid=8130).