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I understand that "mining" for bitcoins requires your computer to do work that you don't monitor, so my question is, how do you know what it is that your computer is doing? Has anyone verified what it is your computer is actually doing while it mines for bitcoins?
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Yes, it is verified. If you wouldn't do the work requested by the proof-of-work then you wouldn't be able to obtain the block reward. Therefore the fact that you're rewarded by the system means you're doing the work. If you're a programmer you can also read the code of the program you're using to mine, and verify for yourself that it's actually doing the proof-of-work.
No I meant what is the work? What is it my computer is doing, and has anyone verified what the work is that is called "mining." – JCN3 – 2014-09-17T10:40:57.293
The algorithm of Bitcoin's "work" is described here: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Proof_of_work - And yes it has been verified by the developers of Bitcoin themselves.
So no third party, or unbiased agency has verified that my computer is doing what they say and nothing else? – JCN3 – 2014-09-17T10:43:14.350
2The entire world has verified that it's doing what it says it's doing. That's the power of open-source software. – Luca Matteis – 2014-09-17T10:45:04.083
I guess my issue is I don't know what it is doing. They talk about creating blocks, and proof of work, but what is the work? Is it churning through bitcoins own pointless algorithm, is it doing problem solving, or computation work for third parties? What is "the work?" – JCN3 – 2014-09-17T10:50:44.833
You keep ignoring what people are telling you. The source code shows what it's doing which is the not-pointless algorithm which is verified by the rest of the world and the fact that you potentially receive a reward for it. Which you don't because a CPU is not fast enough anyway. – Jannes – 2014-09-17T12:36:07.923
The "work" is just taking a big batch of transactions plus a random value and running it through 2 rounds of SHA256 looking for an output that meets certain criteria. Since the outputs of SHA256 are essentially unpredictable relative to the inputs, and the criteria are quite specific, this can add up to a LOT of work. The work itself is meaningless and can be replaced with all kinds of other things. The whole point is that if all of the miners combined are doing X amount of work to keep you honest, you have to do X+1 to lie, which gets prohibitively expensive quite quickly. – David Perry – 2014-09-17T18:59:05.480
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possible duplicate: What are bitcoin miners really solving?
– Murch – 2014-09-17T12:02:14.013Definite duplicate. This question gets asked about once a month because it's apparently very hard to grasp that the purpose of mining is very literally to waste time doing hard work with no real over-arching purpose. "Miners waste resources so that attackers will have to waste more" seems to be a tough point, for some reason. Closing as duplicate. – David Perry – 2014-09-17T18:55:47.977