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Many miners use cooling devices and fans to keep their computers from overheating. In
addition to using a lot of power and racking up the energy bill, mining requires powerful
processors that ordinary personal computers don’t come with.

Each transaction is recorded through an algorithm that takes its
details—time, amounts, and sender and recipient addresses—and
converts the transaction into a string of letters and numbers called a hash.
Anyone running the information through the algorithm will come back
with the same hash. Each hash can be combined with another, resulting in
a new hash that embodies both. Thus, when a miner adds a block to the
blockchain, it is linked to a chain of hashes that go back all the way to
the first, or “Genesis,” block launched by Nakamoto on January 3, 2009.
Any alteration to the chain, no matter how insignificant, results in
a completely different hash. Consequently, the record of a transaction
cannot be changed because many independent parties have already
confirmed the information. After a miner verifies the transaction, other
computers on the peer-to-peer network, called nodes, will validate
the miner’s work with the original blockchain. If a node detects an

CRYPTOCURRENCIES ANd THE BLOCKCHAIN REvOLUTION 16