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1500 questions
68
votes
7 answers
How many bitcoins will there eventually be?
Since bitcoins are being regularly rewarded to miners, will the number of bitcoins continue to grow indefinitely, or will there be a maximum total number of bitcoins in existence? And if there is some kind of limit, what is it and how is it…
eMansipater
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67
votes
9 answers
Where do bitcoins come from and what gives them their value?
Where do bitcoins come from? From the WeUseCoins.com video it appears they are just being produced by "miners" and sold to people. So who backs Bitcoin or gives it its value?
eMansipater
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66
votes
9 answers
How anonymous are Bitcoin transactions?
I read some sources that say Bitcoin transactions are anonymous, some that say they are semi-anonymous, and some that say they are not anonymous at all. In what ways are the transactions anonymous and in what ways are they not anonymous?
Michael McGowan
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66
votes
5 answers
What is a soft fork? What is a hard fork? What are their differences?
When people talk about possible changes to how Bitcoin works they sometimes say a particular change can be implemented as a soft fork. What does that mean? How does this compare to a hard fork?
Dr.Haribo
- 8,439
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66
votes
4 answers
Explanation of what an OP_RETURN transaction looks like
How is OP_RETURN used and why was it introduced in the first place?
almel
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- 17
66
votes
3 answers
How to calculate transaction size before sending (Legacy Non-Segwit - P2PKH/P2SH)
I know that I pay the transaction fee per kB, so how can I calculate how large the transaction will be before I send it via the RPC api. I run a site using bitcoins, and I cannot let the user's balance go negative, so I need to know if they have…
macintosh264
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66
votes
6 answers
What is meant by Bitcoin dust?
I've seen the term "dust" used to describe small transactions that might be considered as spam by the Bitcoin network. Is there is a generally accepted definition of this term?
David Ogren
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65
votes
3 answers
In the ASIC-age, is it worth starting mining Bitcoin at home?
I have recently learned about Bitcoin and would like to get rich quickly into mining.
I have control of a
laptop
library full of ancient computers
powerful gaming PC
cluster of GPUs
an old ASIC, I got for three times its worth off eBay
a cluster…
Murch
- 75,206
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64
votes
3 answers
Will there be 21 million bitcoins eventually?
Every x blocks the mining reward is halved. Will the reward be halved forever such that we never quite reach 21 million bitcoins, or will we reach 21 million bitcoins at some point and will the reward cease to exist altogether?
Extra points for…
erikvold
- 893
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63
votes
3 answers
How does the Lightning network work in simple terms?
Could you please describe how the Lightning network is supposed to work?
How does it scale better than pure blockchain transactions?
What are the advantages and disadvantages of Lightning Network and blockchain transactions?
Murch
- 75,206
- 34
- 186
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62
votes
6 answers
What is the Merkle root?
The Bitcoin wiki Vocabulary article explains why the Merkle root exists:
Every transaction has a hash associated with it. In a block, all of
the transaction hashes in the block are themselves hashed (sometimes
several times -- the exact process…
Steven Roose
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61
votes
6 answers
What is relation between scriptSig and scriptPubKey?
Scenario: A is sending 1 BTC to B.
scriptSig appears in the Input Script.
scriptSig =
Here, public key is the Public Key of the sender, A. (this is the public key corresponding to his Bitcoin Address which has some unspent…
Neon Flash
- 1,053
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60
votes
4 answers
What keeps the average block time at 10 minutes?
I've been told "the network" sets the difficulty level such that there will be one new block mined every ten minutes.
I imagine the rich would instead prefer to keep difficulty as high as possible to prevent other people winning their 50 BTC and…
billpg
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60
votes
3 answers
Should I leave the Bitcoin client open?
Some people recommended that I leave my Bitcoin client open because it helps the network.
Apart from the security implications, why should I do this? I thought that miners were the ones responsible for validating transactions and including them in…
nmat
- 11,509
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60
votes
3 answers
What are bitcoin "confirmations"?
When I receive bitcoins I see a certain number of "confirmations" in the client. What do these mean? Why do most sites make me wait for 6 "confirmations" before a purchase will go through?
lemonginger
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