Yes this can happen sometimes. It's allowed because it's not rational over the long term from a game theory perspective. E.g. if all the miners decided to mine blocks with zero transactions simply for the block reward, then no transactions would flow through the network.

With no transactions the network would be useless and then the reward would be worthless.

Thankfully, it's not any harder to mine a block with transactions than without[1], so this shouldn't be a problem long term.

[1] Other than the fact that larger blocks can take a longer time to transfer across the network.

I just finished a video on how to setup a 2-node local testnet using Docker. In the video, I setup the testnet on the container and then make transactions with Bitcoin-Qt on the host. You can watch the video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLZNvl90PC0

If you have docker installed, it's pretty straightforward. Essentially you:


I'll write up a blog post describing all of the commands shortly. I'm doing a whole series of videos on how to get started programming bitcoin transactions, so if this interests you, subscribe to the channel.

Hey all, I'm putting together a reading list and project directory for learning to program bitcoin transactions.

You can find it here: https://github.com/jashmenn/bitcoin-reading-list

The goal is to provide a document with links to content about how to write code for bitcoin projects and also have a directory of open-source projects.

The theme is to link to content that shows practical application of concepts (vs. overly theoretical).

Check it out and let me know what you think. Feel free to add suggestions in this thread or https://github.com/jashmenn/bitcoin-reading-list/issues and I'll be glad to add them.