How Bitcoin Works Under the Hood

What people said

Recommends Murch · 2013-12 · Bitcoin Stack Exchange · on “Writing an article on Bitcoin for my school paper”

Alright, that might be an information you want to include in your question (you can edit it to do so). As I pointed out above, there is already a question on "how to concisely explain Bitcoin" which might be of interest. I also like this youtube video to better understand how Bitcoin works: How Bitcoin works under the hood [this video] .

Recommends CgodLEY · 2014-03 · Bitcoin Stack Exchange · on “What is a good way to concisely explain Bitcoin?”

For non-technical users, I found this video to be extremely clear and helpful in explaining the details of how Bitcoin works: How Bitcoin Works Under the Hood [this video]

Recommends meshcollider · 2017-06 · Bitcoin Stack Exchange · on “What technologies one should learn to become mature in cryptocurrency”

If you have already started reading a book on bitcoin, I'm going to assume you have at least a layman understand of how it works, and don't need to be linked any complete introductions. The traditional starting point for learning the technical aspects behind bitcoin is, of course, Satoshi Nakamoto's Bitcoin Whitepaper [LINK] Other good reads include the Bitcoin Developer Guide [LINK] and the Bitcoin Wiki [LINK] . The bitcointalk forum's have a lot of information on them too, New to Bitcoin? Start here! [LINK] And the book Mastering Bitcoin by Andreas Antonopoulos, available freely on GitHub [LINK] , is another good source. If you are more of a visual/auditory learner, try a video like How Bi

Recommends Willtech · 2018-01 · Bitcoin Stack Exchange · on “How does the network know my current balance?”

Bitcoin doesn't track account balances like traditional accounting, it only keeps a record of where BTC came from and which address it is sent to. So, your receiving address doesn't technically have a recorded balance, only a calculated balance for all the transactions received on that address. Once you send Bitcoin, the unspent transaction output you reference when sending becomes spent and the calculated balance for that address you originally received on becomes zero. You may find this video of assistance: How Bitcoin Works Under the Hood [this video]

Recommends Willtech · 2018-01 · Bitcoin Stack Exchange · on “Why do we refer to previous transactions in each transaction?”

Bitcoin doesn't track account balances like traditional accounting, it only keeps a record of where BTC came from and which address it is sent to. So, your receiving address doesn't technically have a recorded balance, only a calculated balance for all the transactions received on that address. Once you send Bitcoin, the unspent transaction output you reference when sending becomes spent and the calculated balance for that address you originally received on becomes zero. You may find this video of assistance: How Bitcoin Works Under the Hood [this video]

Recommends Willtech · 2018-02 · Bitcoin Stack Exchange · on “Transaction verification for bitcoin transaction”

A Bitcoin transaction is validated against the consensus rules. This includes that any inputs in the transaction have not already been spent (they are valid utxo's used as the inputs) and several other things. The contents of transactions can be seen but the transaction outputs cannot be unlocked to be spent without the correct key to sign for the receiving address. You can have a look on blockchain.info if you are interested and look up transactions, addresses or, blocks. You can find a very good Bitcoin primer in this video: [this video]

Recommends Eliyahu · 2018-03 · Bitcoin Stack Exchange · on “Miner modifies unconfirmed transactions and put it into the block”

Every valid bitcoin transaction can only be created if you have the sender's private key, public key, and the receiver's public key. You can check that the transaction is valid without having the private key, but to modify it you would need to recreate the transaction from scratch, which would only be possible if you had the sender's private key. So no, it is not possible. Edit: For a good explanation, see [this video]

Cites skaht · 2013-12 · Bitcoin Stack Exchange · on “What is a good analogy (which a layperson would understand) for the process of Bitcoin mining?”

The value of Bitcoin is that of it being a trusted payment system network (analogous to Western Union, Visa, Master Card...) with adequate availability. Without pools and miners it would be difficult for Bitcoin to have scaled as much as it has. Miners are fundamentally doing the brute force work of processing the Bitcoin transactions, by solving a mathematical hashing riddle required to make transactions officially part of the Bitcoin public ledger called the Blockchain. The pools coordinate the miners in to ensure they are not re-doing work other miners have already accomplished. Pools collect the transaction processing fees and the "Finds" of miners (that have solved the mathematical ridd

Cites Casey Harrils · 2018-04 · Bitcoin Stack Exchange · on “Can this double-spend attack happen in Bitcoin?”

I am trying to learn more about Bitcoin. I was looking at this video to understand how a "double-spend attack" is kept from taking place on the Blockchain (in Bitcoin). [this video] In this case, Alice might send money to Bob to purchase an item. Alice may use the same input to send money to Joe for another item at the same time. It then becomes a race as to which one will get approved and which one will get rejected (the one sent to Bob or Joe). It is my understanding that a "double-spend attack" could not take place because all of the nodes will be working at the same time. I have heard of transactions not being processed for days because of a low miners fee. In such a situation, would not this