Quote from: BurtW on June 09, 2016, 12:59:43 PM

Quote from: Real-Duke on June 09, 2016, 12:12:32 PM

First time I talked about mining with a friend he asked me wondered: You burn power to earn money?
Yes for some reason it sounds bad Undecided

I think it is more technically correct to say you burn energy to secure the Bitcoin network. You get paid to secure the Bitcoin network, burning energy is your cost, the difference between what you get paid to secure the network and your energy cost is your profit.

An attacker would need to burn more energy that us (the current miners), the high cost of the energy they would need to burn is the cost of the attack.

The more energy burned the more secure the network.

That is PoW in a nutshell.

Thank you for explaining this, among other things. It is very important that people know to distinguish.