Alright, thanks for the info fellas.
This may sound stupid but am I understanding this correctly in that the mining of bitcoins is actually people doing work on the growing of the block chains' and are rewarded BTC for an amount of work performed.
If that is correct who is the agency responsible for the reward?
My understanding: all clients know the public key for the new block reward. Successfully mining a new block means getting the private key. At that point, all clients recognize that you own the new btc -- whatever quantity is the current block reward.
More knowledgeable people can correct me if I'm wrong.
Noob question 2: If you buy 100BTC or 2BTC or 1 BTC would in any of these scenarios you only obtain one private key, or would you receive 100 keys in the first case.
My understanding: Every client in the world knows that your address owns X number of btc. The fact that you have the private key for that address proves to everyone that you have the right to send btc from that address, up to the total amount stored in that address.
Again, more knowledgeable people can correct me if I'm wrong.