What kind of math problems are they solving? Is it used for anything? Why are they doing it?
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EDIT – thanks for all the explanations! It does make sense to me now; basically I’m picturing money as a “value storage system” that makes commerce possible; I’m a photographer, but I’d rather not have to trade photography for groceries at the market, so money allows me to “store” the value of my work and use that value anywhere. The way I’m reading this, the “value” is in part from making the overall concept work.
2 hours in and I’ve read every reply – but *I still don’t get something*:
I guess I’m looking at this as a value proposition – if someone needs some sort of work done, and I can do that work, if I do it, I’ll get paid for my successful completion of the work. Money will be transferred to me – I’ll exchange the value of my time/labor for *money*, which is sort of a “value-storage device”; someone else got that money for *their* labor and transferred it to me.
So where does the “value” – the monetary value – of crypto come from? Are all these math problems serving a purpose for some organization or entity that needs those problems solved and thus *pays for it*? Is value *transferred* to crypto, of is there some arbitrary value decided upon, and *where does the value come from*? Is crypto just “printing money”?
Feel free to give me idiot-downvotes, but this is something I’ve never heard adequately explained. And everyone I talk to about crypto, that’s not deeply into it, has the same question. (We often forget that when we’re engrossed in a complex and specialized activity, outsides have no clue what we’re really doing, right? You should see my wife’s eyes glaze over when I get into darkroom printing and the density curves of film negatives!)
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