Bitcoin query for the layman

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sorcerer

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I've officially retired now and I think my brain is getting to 'that' age where it's getting more difficult to grasp new concepts/things.

My brain just cannot comprehend that you van buy real, physical things and services with virtual money, but that's not really why I'm here.

I've just read an article about Bitcoin 'Mining' needing huge amounts of electricity and using astronomical 'computing power'. Quite a while ago I got involved with one or two 'distributed-computing projects' I think they were called, such as SETI, where my unused or surplus processing power was used to work on data blocks downloaded from the SETI servers in the hope of finding patterns or clues that may point to the existence of extraterrestrial life.

Can anyone explain what the 'processing power' is doing in the context of Bitcoin, in laymen's terms please?

I have, of course, Googled first but failed to find an explanation basic enough that I understand it.
 
sorcerer said:
'distributed-computing projects' I think they were called, such as SETI, where my unused or surplus processing power was used to work on data blocks downloaded from the SETI servers in the hope of finding patterns or clues that may point to the existence of extraterrestrial life.
Click to expand...
That would be "BOINC."
I've been donating unused cycles for many many years now.
I support SETI, Schistosoma, Collatz Conjecture and several others.
It's easy to just give a whole core to a project. :)
 
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