Bitcoin Mining Isn't "Solving Difficult Math Problems"

--- by D. Petkovski ---

The common way content creators explain Bitcoin mining to their audience is:

“… Miners are solving difficult math problems…”

This is false and misleading.

Nobody is “solving difficult math problems” or the even cringier version “difficult mathematical equations“.

Please share this post with anyone claiming to be an educator and using such terminology.

What is Bitcoin Mining?

Under the hood, the Bitcoin mining process can be summarized as follows:

A Bitcoin miner is trying to guess a number (called a nonce) that when appended to a block header and the whole sequence is hashed, the hash starts with a certain number of zeros.

I know that the last sentence might be too information-dense for beginners, but at least it’s 100% correct.

If you want to DYOR, here are some of the concepts you should understand better:

Hashing – transforming an input to a fixed size output using a cryptographic function that is irreversible (computationally easy to get the output given an input, but computationally infeasible to get the input given an output) and deterministic (the same input will always produce the same output)
Block header – understand its content, why they’re hashed over and over (contributing to the immutability of the blockchain), and the role of the nonce in it
Proof of work – a consensus mechanism where miners are racing with each other to add the next block, thereby proving that a computational effort has been done, and are incentivized by Bitcoin block rewards
Difficulty adjustment – determining how many leading zeros the target hash should have, aiming to maintain the approximate 10 minute average block time

Pro tip: if you’re not a fan of unstructured research, just read the Bitcoin whitepaper.

In Least Amount of Words, What is Bitcoin Mining?

Guessing.

Of course, I’m oversimplifying. But it’s definitely not “solving difficult math problems” or “equations”. Even if you’re loose with your language, you can say “the miners are trying to guess a random number” instead.

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D. Petkovski

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Bitcoin Mining Isn’t “Solving Difficult Math Problems”

What is Bitcoin Mining?

In Least Amount of Words, What is Bitcoin Mining?

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