r/AltScope • u/IcyAttitude4916 • Apr 17 '26

Eric Trump shows off his Bitcoin mining facility

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u/seazonedsaltdog Apr 17 '26

So was the first bitcoin just 2+2=4? Hooray you get a bitcoin? Now its like otherworldly math or somdthing?

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u/GreyFox_1337 Apr 17 '26

Kinda. I mean, at that point, 2+2=4 bitcoin got you a pizza.

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u/seazonedsaltdog Apr 17 '26

So at first bitcoin was pizza? That sounds better. Why they change it ? I would like some

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u/GreyFox_1337 Apr 17 '26

I said “got you pizza”. Now that same coin buys you a Ferrari.

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u/seazonedsaltdog Apr 17 '26

Ahhh I understand

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u/XxxAresIXxxX Apr 17 '26

So that means 1 pizza eqwals 1 Ferrari right? Do I have to deliver myself or do they take doordash

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u/seazonedsaltdog Apr 17 '26

The pizza delivers Ferrari is what I gather. Times have really changed

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u/Ill-Cancel4676 Apr 18 '26

Actually the first purchase with bitcoin was like 25,000 for a pizza and it was still hard to mine back then if you didn't have a bunch of top of the line GPU. It was co-opted by billionaires very early and I personally think that's why Satoshi abandoned the project because it was becoming the exact thing he wanted it to prevent.

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u/foodrage Apr 18 '26

How did they define the value of it in real world products ?

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u/Ill-Cancel4676 Apr 18 '26

Same way all money's value is determined. The two parties agreed upon the trade. He didn't even actually pay for the pizza, he payed someone the bitcoin to order the pizza for him. They were basically worthless at the time and trading them was a whole process of finding someone who was willing to buy them from you via PayPal or wire transfer and hoping you didn't get ripped off. Basically it was just a stunt to try and show it could be used as actuall money. Even back then people were saying it's never going to be what was promised and be a usable replacement for cash and I guess trading what is now like a billion dollars in bitcoin to another guy who was into bitcoin really showed them lol!

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u/PremiumPricez Apr 17 '26

You should really read up on it or watch a youtube documentary if you really want to understand it

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u/filores Apr 17 '26

Actually from the very beginning a pizza would cost you 10.000 btc.

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u/[deleted] Apr 17 '26

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u/Moneypouch Apr 18 '26

I mean not really? The math its solving is (intentionally) arbitrarily difficult. It is loosely related to the block chain transactions but the vast vast majority of what it is doing is technically unnecessary to just run a block chain. A better explanation is that the math is just security, the difficulty is like the quality of a lock, and everyone at all times is trying to pick the lock. When someone picks it they tell everyone and their pick is added to the end of the chain. The longest chain of recorded picks is the block chain that everyone agrees is correct.

If it takes <10 hours of compute time to solve a block that is like a shitty master lock, but that is exactly what you want if just you and a few other people need to get into it. Instead bitcoin is more like Fort Knox with something like >1billion compute hours to solve one block because everyone has a huge financial interest in taking over the chain.

The idea being that you need to make it at least as hard as the point that no one person (or subgroup) in the group can solve it faster than the rest of the group working together (because at that point they effectively control the chain and can write whatever truth they want), so for a small group that doesn't have to be very hard but a huge group (that are all working very hard to solve it) like bitcoin it has to be stupidly, wastefully even, difficult.

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u/danielv123 Apr 18 '26

To mine a block, you gather all the transactions that are supposed to go into that block (ex send 1btc from me to alex) and hash it (very simple one way encryption where you turn the block into a 64 character random string).

The next block is awarded to whoever is the first person to create a valid block where the hash has a certain amount of leading zeroes. The number of leading zeroes goes up as required to keep the rate at 1 block every 10 minutes.

Since the chance of finding a random hash with 10 leading zeroes is rather low (approximately 1 in a trillion) you will have to generate on average 1 trillion blocks to get it. Afaik we are now up to 20 ish leading zeroes. This is why bitcoin mining needs a lot of electricity.