Who here has bought bitcoin?

"Every time I read about mining I get more and more confused as to what the hell it does"

The processing of bitcoin transactions into the blockchain is ALSO referred to as the "mining" of bitcoins because each block successfully added is rewarded with the "transaction fees" paid by those conducting the bitcoin transactions.

It's nothing short of genius. Absolute, pure, fucking genius.

It's like a bank that outsources all it's accounting work, adding credits & debits to their ledger, to independents who get to keep the $2 ATM fees. Except the ledger is public, and NOBODY can go back and alter or erase a prior transaction, only add new ones to it.

What surprises me is that Amazon.com doesn't mine Bitcoin in the wee hours of the morning with their massive server farms. Or maybe they do!

I have a "crackpot" theory as to why "Satoshi Nakamoto" has never spent ANY of the billions of $ worth of Bitcoins he collected in the early days, setting the whole system up.

He irretrievably lost his password.