Trigger warning: I am a complete noob at bitcoin, just trying to wrap my head around a lot of it.

I'm watching a string of videos on bitcoin, and a thought keeps popping up in my head: Is this whole ting a bit too overly complicated?

My main reason for thinking this is that the idea of simply having transactions validated across the blockchain (feel free to fry me if I am being ignorant about how things work) seems to be enough to make the entire concept work. Mining, the long hashes, all the other stuff I barely even fathom, it all seems like just painting flames on your bike to make it go faster. It seems unnecesary. If I make a transaction and that transaction has to be confirmed by dozens of nodes that track all the transactions, isn't that a pretty hard thing to outsmart already?

I'm not saying the other things should not be done, I just would like to understand the value they add to the whole process. Because every wallet essentially meeting up to check if a transaction is a-okay seems like the best system to me, all on its own!