Mining
Bitcoin mining is performed with ASIC (application specific integrated circuit) computer harware.
These machines only do a specific function. ie: mine bitcoin blocks and process transactions. In the beginning bitcoin could be mined with a home pc.
Early adapters realized large gains as the asset increased in value.
Home users can still mine a fork of bitcoin. It is called Ravencoin. It has been solely supported by it's community.
A wallet download is needed which can take hours or a day depending on your machine. Ensure you have storage avaiable as you will downloasd every block transaction.
The wallet acts as a node and supports the network.
A bitcoin wallet can also be downloaded. It will take a very lomg time as bitcoin has millions of transactions.
The global ledger is on every computer that runs a node.
This is how the network became so powerful and secure. Every transaction has to match around the world or it would be rejected.
Bitcoin is a decentralized global ledger that everyone can see. The world has never had anything quite like it.
The younger generation is quicker to adapt crypto than the older generations who have been used to the fiat system.
It must be noted that bitcoin has many challengers but they are different platforms built to handle many different applications.
This comes as a cost to security but huge gains are made in the DEFI space and people are willing to gamble.
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