Explaining Bitcoin Mining To My Girlfriend \ stacker news ~bitcoin

Explaining Bitcoin Mining To My Girlfriend

2874 sats \ 31 comments \ @dillon 29 Feb bitcoin

She asked me to explain it. I wasn't trying to orange pill her. Since she's dating me I figured she's orange pilled by default. I was trying to thing of a good analogy that would make since to her. She's your typical blonde so this is what I came up with.

"Imagine you're buying makeup, but you want to make sure that you're buying the good stuff without a bunch of toxic chemicals, reach out to 10 different testing companies and say 'here's $10k. first person to test this makeup and tell me if its good or not gets it. But you want to make sure the test was good so you you have the other companies double check the tests and make sure they're correct and conform to the right standards, so you pay the other companies $500 each. Mining works the same way where one person mines a block and gets the biggest reward and the other miners validate that it was done correctly and get a smaller reward." Obviously this assumes that everyone participating is totally honest. It's just an analogy though.

This seemed to make sense to her but what are your thoughts? Is this a good way to explain bitcoin to a non tech female? And are there any other good analogies for a non pleb to be orange pilled by?

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1 reply \ @dillon OP 1 Mar

EDIT - I know this is wrong. I was thinking validators got a reward as well because when I was building a mining pool a little bit ago and we'd number of blocks validated as one of the variables to see how much work a miner was contributing. My mistake, but too late to edit the original post.

31 sats \ 0 replies \ @kr 1 Mar

glad you shared this, and glad some stackers were able to jump in with some corrections

hope to see more of your content on SN going forward!

202 sats \ 7 replies \ @Fabs 1 Mar

Mining is essentially nothing more than a more complex version of "guess-and-check". I'll try to keep it compact:

A miner constructs a candidate block (a block which has not yet been verified and validated by other participants in the Bitcoin network, thus only existing with the miner's node) and essentially keeps changing an arbitrary input contained within the candidate block's block header's "Nonce" field, which is short for Number used once.

The Nonce is an arbitrary input which the miner in question changes as often as necessary until the SHA-256 hashing algorithm spits out a result (hash) that undercuts the currently specified Target, as specified in the block header's "Target" field.

Once that's achieved, the miner includes the hash into his candidate block, and propagates it along to other participant's nodes, which verify the block's contents against the consensus rules, after which they propagate the respective block further along, and add it to their local copy of the Blockchain.

Simplified: Miners construct a box containing transactions and other necessary data, and start throwing dice.

Once they achieve a specific throw that undercuts a target set in advance, they are granted a "seal" which they use to "seal" the box, and send it along to other participants for verification.

The other participants set out to thoroughly verify that seal against a specific set of rules. Once it turns out that the seal adheres to said rules, approval is granted and the box is send along to other participants, which verify the seal on their turn, and so on.

Others are free fix any faults or unclarities.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @dillon OP 1 Mar

The dice metaphor is a good one, but still a little complex for her haha. Here's a little background on how difficult of a task it is to explain Bitcoin to her. For about 7 years she was a model so she spent most of her time and focus on looking pretty. She's moved up to managing other models now at a startup so she's not dumb, she's actually pretty smart. But between managing bimbos and doing photo shoots, anything that is tech related has to be super simple. Like not ELI5 but ELI3.

I wanted to start this discussion to hopefully figure out the best way to orange pill the average person. I'm definitely going to use the dice metaphor, just a little dumbed down.

0 sats \ 5 replies \ @Natalia 1 Mar

Simplified: Miners construct a box containing transactions and other necessary data, and start throwing dice.

so what the Miners actually need to do - or more like the software does the work itself?

33 sats \ 4 replies \ @Fabs 1 Mar

I only know that that's part of the process, and I'd say that it's nothing that miners do by hand, but rather something for which they use an automated piece of software which does this for them.

0 sats \ 3 replies \ @Natalia 1 Mar

then it gets even more interesting - who wrote those software?

so it seems all the miners need to do is plug the software somewhere, thus the cheaper electricity the better? and what's stopping everyone to be a miner?

100 sats \ 2 replies \ @Fabs 1 Mar

Don't do this to me Natalie, I'm a mere pleb trying to act smart, please enlighten us, I beg you!

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @Natalia 1 Mar

haha, I was trying to understand more - I'm a complete noob in the mining topic. 😂😂😂

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Fabs 1 Mar

Yeah, I only know the part they play in the process of extending the chain, creating new bitcoin yada yada, but nothing about the software / mining rig config's et cetera.

35 sats \ 4 replies \ @justanumber 1 Mar

"typical blonde" LOL

When you said "EDIT - I know this is wrong" I thought you were gonna address your condescending & superior attitude towards your gf, but no lol

53 sats \ 2 replies \ @joda 1 Mar

Wonder why SN is a bunch of dudes...?

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @justanumber 1 Mar

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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @justanumber 1 Mar

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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @dillon OP 1 Mar

She makes fun of herself for it all the time and we joke about that and me being a nerd. We've accepted each other and our stereotypes. I definitely don't feel superior at all. She's cooler than I am haha

31 sats \ 0 replies \ @037447d9ca 1 Mar

I didn't understand jack shit of your explanation🤣

20 sats \ 1 reply \ @premitive1 29 Feb

but why are you making stuff up, like the other companies get $500 each? it seems unnecessary

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @dillon OP 1 Mar

I was thinking validators got a reward as well but I know that's wrong lol. I was building a mining pool a little bit ago and we'd use how many validations a person made as one of the many variables to see how much work they they were adding to the pool. My mistake, but too late to edit the original post lol

10 sats \ 0 replies \ @Coinsreporter 1 Mar

It can get real short ..

..😜😜

10 sats \ 0 replies \ @random_ 1 Mar

Dunning Kruger effect

31 sats \ 0 replies \ @Satoshis_Code 29 Feb

Lol

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @erict875 1 Mar

Here's is how I think about mining/pow in my mind.

Digitalisation frees us from the constraints of the physical realm, I can replicate digital information at will at no cost (Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V). This is desirable because it makes us more productive.

When it comes to digital money however, this is not the case anymore, because, to have value, money has to be scarce.
So far, we always used trusted third parties to ensure this crucial property, but TTP have always broken our trust.

Bitcoin's PoW makes TTP obsolete by enforcing an objective and prohibitive cost to the trivial task of creating a digital asset, thus ensuring the digital asset remains scarce.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Natalia 1 Mar

"Imagine you're buying makeup, but you want to make sure that you're buying the good stuff without a bunch of toxic chemicals, reach out to 10 different testing companies and say 'here's $10k. first person to test this makeup and tell me if its good or not gets it. But you want to make sure the test was good so you you have the other companies double check the tests and make sure they're correct and conform to the right standards, so you pay the other companies $500 each.

not sure is this a good explanation, as I was thinking why can't you verify that yourself instead of relying on others 😂 but I'd happy to read your followup explanation too, because I don't understand that part yet...

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @DiedOnTitan 1 Mar

It's game theory. There are simpler ways to explain distributing incentives that reward honesty. E.g. If a mother has two kids that fight over the last piece of cake, if she splits the cake into two pieces, the kids will fight about who gets to pick first. The way to gamify this is to let one split the cake, and the other pick first. The one splitting will do their best to split exactly even so that no unfair advantage is given to the other. The mother supervises the transaction, but the kids control the outcome.

In a similar way, the Bitcoin protocol supervises the miners, and the miners have been incentivized to be honest.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Bell_curve 1 Mar

YouTube has some good videos for the layperson

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @senf 1 Mar

"reach out to 10 different testing companies and say 'here's $10k. first person to test this makeup and tell me if its good or not gets it. But you want to make sure the test was good so you you have the other companies double check the tests and make sure they're correct and conform to the right standards, so you pay the other companies $500 each. Mining works the same way where one person mines a block and gets the biggest reward and the other miners validate that it was done correctly and get a smaller reward."

That is just not true at all.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @dillon OP 1 Mar

Yeah my mistake. Explanation in reply above

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @OriginalSize 1 Mar

I think you should sign her up here before you go explaining anything else like this.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @kdnolan 1 Mar

The lottery.

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @ablunderfilledlife 29 Feb

Great analogy! I'm glad it made sense to her, but I am curious to know if she had any follow-up questions.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @dillon OP 29 Feb

She had a lot of follow up questions haha but a lot of those were explaining what a hash is and other crypto / coding verbage