Spouse asking questions regarding miners: who is paying the reward ?
18 sats \ 4 comments \ @saltypirate 28 Jan 2023 bitcoin
Despite it being nice and toasty (albiet a tad loud for white noise) wants an explanation as to who is paying the miner
Spouse: what is a reward?
Me: fees for confirming transactions on the blockchain
Spouse: but who is paying it?
Me: the pool
Spouse: doesn't that imply some sort of centralization?
On one hand I am very proud that centralization is the core concern (I see me rants have landed)
On the other hand, I need help with explaining this in a straight forward, logical, succint way
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10 sats \ 0 replies \ @Lumor 28 Jan 2023
Members of a pool try to mine blocks that send the fees + block subsidy to the pool operator. They send both successful and failed attempts to the pool operator to prove how much work they are doing.
You have to trust the pool to give you your fair share of gains, but if it doesn't, you can always switch to a different pool after some days.
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1 sat \ 0 replies \ @k00b 28 Jan 2023
The protocol describes miners get paid 2 different ways when they successfully mine a block:
  1. the block reward which mints new bitcoin and gives them to the miner
    • this is how the supply of bitcoin is distributed fairly ... this reward decreases about every 4 years
  2. fees from the txs included in the block
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @NorthKoreanHostage 28 Jan 2023
The coinbase is the payment miners pay to themselves. It consists of the block reward and the transaction fees of the BTC transactions the miner includes in the block.
The block reward consists of newly created BTC. This is where all BTC comes from. It is the incentive for miners to participate and secure the Bitcoin blockchain.
All BTC comes from Bitcoin mining.
Every 4 years the block reward is cut in half. This means BTC's inflation rate is cut in half every 4 years. Eventually BTC will have no inflation around the year 2140. Bitcoin will eventually become infinitely hard money.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @saltypirate OP 28 Jan 2023
UPDATE: dug up this from Andreas - amazing how timeless and prescient he is (given that it is from 2015)
*bonus at min 25:50
might be time refer to refer the White Paper
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