Get ready for more and more "What is Bitcoin?" (
http://www.sacbee.com/news/business/technology/article178644401.html) articles and news videos that will get the most basic things wrong. For example:
You can also “mine” [bitcoins] by solving “complex math problems” with your computer in a process CNBC called “complicated, mathematical wizardry.”Miners' ASIC-based computers really just do Herculean grunt-work --- there is nothing mysterious about it. The real "complex math problem" and "complicated mathematical wizardry" lies in the hash algorithm itself, which expands or reduces any arbitrary data-set to an alpha-numeric string of predetermined length (and even its process is totally public knowledge). For advanced hash-algorithms like the one Bitcoin uses, there is only one data-set in the universe that will produce a given hash output -- a fact that makes Bitcoin what it is now, and will be in the future. Bitcoin itself cannot be hacked and there is no black box keeping all the secrets.
Don't expect the "complex math problems" and "complicated, mathematical wizardry" pseudo-explanations to go away anytime soon. It's just the nature of journalism.