Principles of bitcoin software

1. How does bitcoin work? From the perspective of operation, bitcoin is actually a decentralized account book on the Internet

centralized account book (bank)
the bank is a centralized account book, which is stored in the bank's central database, and it says:
Zhang San's a account balance is 3000 yuan, The balance of Li Si's B account is 2000 yuan...
when Zhang San wants to transfer 1000 yuan to Li Si's B account through a account:

Zhang San goes to the bank and submits the transfer request to the bank
the bank confirms Zhang San's identity through bank card password and checks whether Zhang San's a account has enough balance
after passing the check, The bank adds a transfer record: account number a transfers 1000 yuan to account number B,
and modifies the balance: account number a balance = 3000-1000 = 2000 yuan, account number B balance = 2000 + 1000 = 3000 yuan

decentralized account book
suppose there is such a small village where people do not rely on the bank, but use the account book to record who has how much money, Everyone's account book says:
Zhang San's a account balance is 3000 yuan, Li Si's B account balance is 2000 yuan...
when Zhang San wants to transfer 1000 yuan to Li Si's B account through a account,
Zhang San roars: attention, I transfer 1000 yuan to Li Si's B account with a account
the villagers near Zhang San listen to Zhang San's voice and check whether Zhang San's a account has enough balance
after passing the inspection, the villagers write on their account books: account a transfers 1000 yuan to account B
and modify the balance: account a balance = 3000-1000 = 2000 yuan, account B balance = 2000 + 1000 = 3000 yuan
the villagers near Zhang San tell the distant villagers about the transfer until everyone knows about the transfer, so as to ensure the consistency of everyone's account book

decentralized account book (bitcoin)
bitcoin users run bitcoin client software on the computer, such a computer is called a node
a large number of node computers connect with each other to form a peer-to-peer network like spider web
when Zhang San wants to transfer 1 bitcoin to Li Si's B account through a account,

Zhang San broadcast the transfer transaction requirements to the surrounding nodes: a account transfers 1 bitcoin to B account, and signs with the private key of a account
(the private key of account a can be simply understood as the password of account a, and the bitcoin on account a can be used as long as the private key of account a is known)
the nodes around Zhang San check the authenticity of the transaction signature through the public key of account a, and check whether Zhang San's account a has enough balance
after the check, the node writes to its own account book: account a transfers 1 bitcoin to account B,
and modify the balance: a account balance = 3 bitcoin - 1 bitcoin = 2 bitcoin, B account balance = 2 bitcoin + 1 bitcoin = 3 bitcoin
the node broadcasts the transaction to the surrounding nodes and transmits it to all the nodes until all the nodes receive the transaction

bitcoin's decentralized public ledger is called blockchain. This is the simplest description of the operation of bitcoin. Of course, the actual operation of bitcoin is far more complex than this. We will explain it further in the future.

2. Bitcoin is a consensus network, contributing to a new payment system and a fully digital currency. It is the first decentralized peer-to-peer payment network, which is controlled by its users without a central management organization or middleman. From the user's point of view, bitcoin is much like Internet cash. Bitcoin can also be regarded as the most outstanding three style bookkeeping system

anyone can run software on specialized hardware and become a bitcoin miner. mining software monitors transaction broadcast through P2P network and performs appropriate tasks to process and confirm these transactions. Bitcoin miners can earn transaction fees paid by users to speed up transaction processing and additional bitcoin issued according to fixed formula
new transactions need to be included in a block with mathematical workload proof before they can be confirmed. This kind of proof is hard to generate because it can only be generated by trying billions of calculations per second. Miners need to run these calculations before their blocks are accepted and rewarded. As more people start mining, the difficulty of finding effective blocks will be automatically increased by the network to ensure that the average time to find a block remains at 10 minutes. Therefore, the competition for mining is very fierce, and no indivial miner can control the content contained in the block chain
workload proof is also designed to rely on previous blocks, which forces the time sequence of block chain. This design makes it extremely difficult to cancel previous transactions, because the workload proof of all subsequent blocks needs to be recalculated. When two blocks are found at the same time, the miner will process the first block received, and once the next block is found, it will be transferred to the longest block chain. This ensures that the mining process maintains a global consistency based on processing capacity
bitcoin miners can neither increase their rewards by cheating, nor deal with the fraulent transactions that destroy the bitcoin network, because all bitcoin nodes will reject the blocks containing invalid data that violate the bitcoin protocol rules. Therefore, even if not all bitcoin miners can be trusted, the bitcoin network is still secure

sha256 is an encryption algorithm.

3. Throughout history, there have been cases of gold, goods and even land confiscation in times of crisis. It is also disturbing that, as we have seen in Venezuela, people there are struggling with high inflation. Sometimes it is extremely difficult to convert money into another currency, which makes people feel helpless and can only watch their life savings be worthless. Bitcoin is very different. It is in electronic form and has no boundary restrictions. It can be transferred without any intermediary. Anyone who connects to a mobile device or the Internet can use it. All transactions are permanently recorded in the public ledger, and there is no dispute about ownership
in a recent article in the New York Times, a Venezuelan economist described how bitcoin became a part of Venezuela's daily life, so that on a mainstream bitcoin trading platform, Venezuela's trading volume ranked second only to Russia in the world. But bitcoin is not just used to protect wealth in extreme conditions. In general, bitcoin is also an excellent choice for portfolio diversification, and it should be seen as part of a comprehensive wealth preservation strategy.

4. Bitcoin mining is a process of using computer hardware to do mathematical calculation for bitcoin network to confirm transactions and improve security. As a reward for their service, miners can get the Commission included in the transaction they confirm, as well as the newly created bitcoin. Mining is a professional and competitive market. The bonus is divided according to the amount of calculation. Not all bitcoin users mine, and it's not easy to make money from mining

however, at present, professional Avalon ASIC miner is needed for mining, and it also needs to be included in a mine pool. If you are a retail investor, of course, if you arrange a large mine, you don't need it.