“: Bitcoins are created out of thin air by running known-to-be-difficult computations on computers. Because the total number of bitcoins (existing + to be mined) is fixed :”
I don’t fully understand Bitcoin, but this is correct. It is created out of thin air.
My (minimal and not necessarily correct) understanding of the process is that in the computational process, you don’t come out with a whole number for a bitcoin. It always involves fractional numbers (a whole number plus a decimal).
As an example: 1.000000233 = 1 bitcoin
The .000000233 disappears. There are “mining” programs that search out this fraction and if you find enough of them, you can “assemble” a bitcoin.
You can do this from your desktop or laptop computer, but it will usually take a very, very, (add a bunch of “verys”) long time this way.
People build mining farms with tens, hundreds, thousands of computers “mining” for these fractions, which results in electric bills that may outpace your ability to economically “pay” for a bitcoin. That’s where the reference to Three Gorges Dam (3GD) comes in. If the dam goes, so does the power it’s providing to all the bitcoin mining computer farms in China - and there are a lot of them.
Lot of mining going on all over the world, actually. Sucks up a lot of power to run the computers, though. Not very green....
what a world....
who thinks these things up?
To this primitif, bitcoin sounds like the ultimate shell game.