bitcoin consensus mechanism (proof of work) is like the million monkeys with typewriters, eventually one of the monkeys randomly types the first page of Tale of Two Cities ... and that node gets the block creation reward
this is why 'mining pools' are a huge aspect of the network, so the members agree to split the reward in some way
another analogy that works well is that operating a node is like buying a lotto ticket, and then about every ten minutes the network chooses a winner based on random number drawing (it's a bit more sophisticated, but functionally just barely)
so if you have capital to throw at the network, you can increase your chances of rewards, but it is still just a probability
the funniest part is that there is a low-level concern in the BTC world that over 51% of the network hashing power is in China, which means if those nodes were all pooled together under Xi, China would control the network
oh ya, it's like super dumb brute force math
bitcoin consensus mechanism (proof of work) is like the million monkeys with typewriters, eventually one of the monkeys randomly types the first page of Tale of Two Cities ... and that node gets the block creation reward
this is why 'mining pools' are a huge aspect of the network, so the members agree to split the reward in some way
another analogy that works well is that operating a node is like buying a lotto ticket, and then about every ten minutes the network chooses a winner based on random number drawing (it's a bit more sophisticated, but functionally just barely)
so if you have capital to throw at the network, you can increase your chances of rewards, but it is still just a probability
the funniest part is that there is a low-level concern in the BTC world that over 51% of the network hashing power is in China, which means if those nodes were all pooled together under Xi, China would control the network
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