Do you know how Bitcoin mining works? And what is Proof of Work?! @bitintro explains 💡 - Proof of Work or PoW is the consensus mechanism how new blocks are created in bitcoin. - Miners take the hash (fingerprint) of the previous block, choose pending transactions based on paid fees and a random number as input for the hashing function. - The hashing function: SHA-256 is a mathematical operation where a string of long data is converted to a random but unique short output (fingerprint of data). That means even if you change only a little bit of the input, the output will be completely different. - There is a specific target which has to be met by the output hash. However, a valid hash can only be found by doing this operation over and over again (quantillion times!). This is the proof that work has been done by miners (the operation is performed on specialized hardware called ASICS and costs a lot of energy). - Finally, some miner finds an output hash, which is in the target space. A new block is created and added to the blockchain. All transactions in the block are now settled. The miner gets rewarded with mining fees from transactions and the block reward. This happens on average every 10 minutes. - If new miners join and blocks are now found in shorter periods of time, the target which has to be meet, will be adjusted upwards and vice versa. The difficulty adjustment happens every 2016 blocks (2 weeks. This ensures that on average there is found a new block every 10 minutes. - Have you ever mined bitcoin? 🧐 . . . #bitintro #bitcoin #bitcoineducation #bitcoinminingpool #bitcoinminingusa #proofofwork #cryptoeducation #bitcoinaustria #bitcoinminingworldwide #altcoins #pow #cryptocurrency #blockchainmining (at Vienna, Austria) https://www.instagram.com/p/B9669VQgDBJ/?igshid=7gr8uocd64ef