Bitcoin Forum

Thanks to all you guys who are participating in the question thread. I thought it might be interesting to start a subjective discussion thread as well. The rules are the same - no spam, newbies and juniors, all post for the benefit of improving the knowledge of forum members etc.
So here is the first topic for discussion.

Miners don't mine Bitcoins, miners mine blocks for the blockchain

In practice, miners ensure the safety of the net by performing the PoW computations and then the nodes reach a consensus on which of the proofs of work has more "work" on it and thus the "mined" block is adopted as the valid one.

It is true that miners don´t mine bitcoins, instead they collect the block fees (a good reason why they don´t want to increase the block size) and receive some bitcoins for it, but the bitcoins are not created, they are already there since the genesis block.

Thank you for your great job. It`s remarkable, that somebody gives new members a chance to get award just for posting some reasonable things and discussing interesting topics. I`m very greatfull and I think, that every fresh member should be as well.
Back to the question, though  :)
Miners do mine blocks for the Bitcoin blockchain. Only there is an award for completing the block, that goes to a person, who finished it. You can`t mine blocks and not get an award (only if you really up to do such way ;D) and you don`t get that BTC without mining blocks. It`s like mutually related :) I think, this is more about how you look at it. If a guy wants to be a part of a blockchain technology and that`s the main reason he is mining - so he mines blocks. But if one started to do this only with a goal to get cryptocurrency - he is mining BTC ;)
It`s kind of a phylosophic one. I`m thinking back in the days, when Bitcoin just showed up, it was that way. BTC didn`t cost much, so people was interested in an idea of cryptocurrency. And they participated because of that interest and because they had a desire to change a wold a little bit.
But yeah, of course people are mining blocks and get a reward for this activity, they not like making crypto out of air. ;D

Technically speaking, Miners don't mine bitcoin because they mine for the blocks to unlock bitcoin and added it to the public ledger which is the so called blockchain technology, but in the real world Miners do mine bitcoin in a way of allowing it to increase the supply in the market which is the job of every miners.

In my understanding, miners mine bitcoin because that is their purpose in the first place, its just so happen that they have to follow the process so they can get bitcoin. Same thing with mining golds, copper, etc. they don't mine for the rocks, but its only the process so golds will come out.

Here is a thought for you guys. If miners mined Bitcoins, then every Bitcoin would have a unique identification number - true or false?

Miners ensure the peer to peer network exists, the block validations could not be possible without this system. They provide a service to the network by putting their equipement and energy at work.
In return for their service, algorithm gives miners rewards in Bitcoin, for each block added to the chain.
The very first block mined 50 BTC, if I remember well and those were locked, no one can ever use that ammount of the Genesis Block. These days, the BTC rewards are important to miners, I don’t think there are many people mining only for the love of solving the block. Is like with the Internet, everyone uses Internet, but not many know how it really works.
I think your statement has deeper meaning and aims to triger awareness that if we don’t try to protect this ecosystem, it might fail its original purpose.

I think, that would be a false for situation that we have now. As for now, blocks have ordinal numbers. Last one was 529759 at the time I checked.
But if miners mined Bitcoins and not blocks, Bitcoins surely would have some type of identificator.

true

Well, what I remember from what I learnt in 2012, is that a Bitcoin doesn't exist.
BTC transactions do exist, and by doing the sums of transactions, you can deduct which wallet owns how many BTC.

So I don't know if it's possible to answer to that question.

As we know, "Bitcoin mining is the process by which transactions are verified and added to the public ledger, known as the block-chain"
and "the Transaction data is permanently recorded in files called blocks. They can be thought of as the individual pages of a city recorder's record book (where changes to title to real estate are recorded) or a stock transaction ledger. Blocks are organized into a linear sequence over time (also known as the block chain)".

Blocks of the Bitcoin network has a identification number which we called as "hash". Every Bitcoin transaction also have an ID (TXID) which includes amount of Bitcoin sent, sending/receiving bitcoin address and date of the transfer. What miners do exactly are creats the blocks, validate the bitcoin transactions and include those created blocks in the block chain( by solving cryptographic algorithm). For doing above works they have paid small fee with bitcoins.

Hello to everyone! Totally agree with TS statement. Although, people often say that they are "mining bitcoin" it`s not accurate. Let`s make it more clear: every computer in blockchain network is a node. Some of them are using their resources to "mine" - form a number of transactions (and some other information) into blocks and solving a complex mathematical puzzle, which result is a special number (aka "nonce"), which passed through a hash function give a result with a specific number of zeros. Every block has it`s ordering number (aka "height").
And if miners would mine actual Bitcoins in a way, they now are mining blocks you won`t be able to divide 1 BTC into parts and there should be a fixed number of Bitcoins in a blockchain. And yes, in this case each Bitcoin would have an identificator.

The miners are one of the workforce who keep the bitcoin network running and safe. The miners process all transactions to blocks that we made in the network
and so they build the blockchain. Bitcoins are only the reward for their work.





With my newbie knowledge I think that is false. Only the mined blocks and the transactions on the blockchain
have there own unique identification numbers and not each single bitcoin inside the block.

Just imagine how many unique identification numbers would be necessary if you split the bitcoin he has 8 decimal,
I'm not a mathematician but when each single satoshi also need his own identification number that would to much.

Thanks for the replies guys, and keep them coming.

I highlighted this sentence, because it shows that Eternity has thought about the question and its ramifications.

Totally Agree, Miners do not mine bitcoin, they mine blocks.  To mine a block a complex mathematical puzzle need to solved.
Miners will be constantly trying to solve the block and first one who solves it declare to the network.
As a reward bitcoins are released in Network to the miner (Coinbase transaction) for block solving.

In short, we can say miner solve the blocks and get rewarded with bitcoins.

Miners do not mine bitcoins, miners verifies blockchain transactions.

Blockchain technology is decentralized meaning there is no central support group that manages and validates each transaction hence it is only verified by other users of the said blockchain (these users are also referred as miners) by making/placing a new block in the blockchain.

In layman terms, miners will help verify bitcoin transactions, place a new block in the blockchain then in return will be awarded by bitcoins.  Hence, they are not literally mining bitcoins placing a new block to verify transactions (the term "miners mine block") and bitcoin is just a reward of their assistance.

I was about to give you a merit for that post, but it looks as if you have taken a couple of statements from the Bitcoin WiKi. If you had quoted the source, then I would probably have given you the merit.

Your statement is true, and that is why I prefaced my sentence with the word 'if' . My point was that individual Bitcoins are not mined, but if they were, then they would need individual identifiers. Banknotes are an example of this, although they are printed rather than mined.