Very helpful. Thanks!
You've inspired me to do a complete line by line technical analysis of the code and writing it up and posting here over the next few weeks.

Hi folks,

I've been reading up on the bitcoin protocol non-stop and have a couple of questions that I haven't been able to answer:

• When a node assembles a new block to mine, how does it determine which transactions from the list of unconfirmed transactions to include in that block that it will mine?
• When a node assembles a new block to mine, does the order of the transactions that it picks to be in the new block matter?  My guess is that it should but I couldn't find any literature confirming or denying that.  Can anyone explain?

Thank you!
Konstantin

Wait a min! Replace that loss? Once the private key is lost, any "coins" (really, transactions in the blockchain) encrypted by that private key are "gone" (really, frozen from being spent) forever, there's no replacing them.

Thanks. Some follow up questions:

• So when a miner "solves" the block, he announces it to the network, and then what? All of the other nodes stop mining that block and add it to the blockchain and move on to the next?  How does this work exactly? Are nodes in the network mining different blocks?
• What is the coinbase transaction?

Thanks!

I'm just trying to wrap my head around the whole process, from what I've read I have a few questions. If you could answer any of them I would be very grateful

• For each BTC block that is mined, are the coins awarded to only 1 miner (or mining pool)? Does that mean all other miners that were mining that block lose out?
• Is the number of coins awarded for each mined block the same (if so, how many)? Are all blocks "created equal" so to speak?
• If the total number of BTC is meant to tend toward 21 million, how will this be achieved. Will the number of BTCs per block decrease, or will the time taken to mine each block increase?
• As BTC has become more popular, and more transactions have taken place, does this mean blocks later in the chain will have more transactions "written" into them? Doesn't this mean more computing power is required to verify them?
• I have read that a transaction fee is awarded to the BTC miner. This is voluntary, but as the rewards for mining BTCs decrease over time it will become compulsory. How exactly will this be enforced? How can people be coerced into giving part of their transaction to the miner (isn't this akin to taxation?)

Thanks again!

I'm trying to get a solid understanding of the protocol and will be reading the original bitcoin paper by Satoshi tomorrow, as well as diving into the wiki at https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/.

What I'm interested in doing first is just cloning something like bitaddress.org just as a challenge to myself and to also get familiar with all the different aspects of bitcoin.
I'm most specifically interested in how mixing services work and how BlockChain's taint analysis works.

Thanks again wumpus, davout, and gweedo for the suggestions.  Really appreciate it!

I sense sarcasm. I'm just trying to learn the proper way.  Thanks!

Hi folks,

I've been reading up on Bitcoin, and I'd like to know if anyone has any recommendations for trusted and widely-used PHP libraries that can create valid private/public ECDSA key pairs?
Or any linux command line tools (bitcoind??)? Or what's the proper steps to take to create such a pair of keys in pseudo-code? I've read https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Private_key and other pages, but nothing explains how to actually create these key pairs?

Thank you,
Konstantin

Hi Everyone,

I am a web developer (PHP, Python, JS, etc) who's interested in learning how Bitcoin works and to contribute back to the community.  I'm a long time lurker, but now actually have the time to participate!

Best Regards,
Konstantin