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OK, so I understand that bitcoin in introduced into the system when mining is performed. And mining is a process of adding transactions records to the bitcoin chain of blocks. And transaction (mentioned above) is nothing but bitcoin transactions taking place, which needs to be securely computed and added to the chain of blocks.

Now, my question is when the first bitcoin was rewarded to the first miner (may be the second one, after Satoshi added the main block), what transactions were taking place which needed to be computed and added. Theoretically, there was a point when there were no bitcoins in the network, then how did it start.

Haris
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    It's a very common misconception that mining is inherently about processing transactions, and can't take place without previous transactions to process. Your question has been asked many times before on this site (I just marked about six more duplicates). There must be some misleading article out there somewhere that lots of people are reading. – Nate Eldredge Feb 18 '18 at 15:17

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It startet with the rewards of the first blocks. After the genesis-block, there were 50 bitcoins in total, after the second block, there were 100 bitcoins in total, 150 after the thrid block...

This is the first block and the only transaction is a coinbase transaction (reward to an address). https://blockchain.info/block/00000000839a8e6886ab5951d76f411475428afc90947ee320161bbf18eb6048

And the following blocks do all look like that (only the coinbase transaction in all those blocks) until Satoshi made the first transaction from one address to another address (in block #170)

hardfork
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  • Yes, I understand that the addition of the first block resulted in the first bitcoin reward being given.. But what was the transaction contained in the first block. Since at that point there were no bitcoins.. – Haris Feb 18 '18 at 13:53
  • Alpha you probably mean the transaction in block #170 from Satoshi to Hal Finney.

    @Haris The coinbase transaction (the mining reward) does not spend an output, it creates coins out of thin air.

     – 0xb10c Feb 18 '18 at 14:45
  • @0xb10c, I don't know if I am asking it in the right way, or if I am no understanding it. I know the bitcoins are created out of thin air, when transaction blocks are added to the chain, that's how POW works. The initial mining was done on transactions, but there were no (or very less bitcoins in the system initially right). So what was the transaction record (for those very first blocks) about? – Haris Feb 18 '18 at 14:59
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    Only the coinbase transactions. A block with only one transaction - the coinbase transaction - is perfectly valid. – 0xb10c Feb 18 '18 at 15:03
  • @0xb10c, just to clear one more thing, mining is the only way to generate bitcoins right. All the bitcoins in circulation presently, are a result of mining? – Haris Feb 18 '18 at 15:32
  • this is correct. – 0xb10c Feb 18 '18 at 15:46