We've covered a lot of ground in this course but now where you're going to have some fun. Let's go on
a field trip and actually look at the Bitcoin network at work so you can actually see how all the concepts
we've been looking at actually work in reality.
For doing this, we're gonna be using a block explorer. A block explorer is a type of tool that enables you
to see the bitcoin blockchain, or whichever blockchain you're looking at. For instance, right now you're
looking at a block explorer found at blockchain.com/explorer What you'll find is that this block
explorer not only lets you look at Bitcoin, it lets you look at other block chains. Ethereum... Here's
Bitcoin Cash and there are other block explores for different blockchains. For the purposes of this course,
we're focusing on blockchain and bitcoin.
So let's drill down on bitcoin. Key things I want to point out to you about this is that Bitcoin is a
public blockchain. As a public blockchain, that means that the information that's recorded on the bitcoin
blockchain is available for everyone to see.
That's why we will now be able to use this block explorer to look into the bitcoin blockchain.
Key thing I want to point out to you is that, while we're looking at this information on the blockchain.com
block explorer, you will also be able to see other block explorers. For instance, this is BTC.com
which also has a block explorer. And you'll find that right now, BTC.com is listing the latest
block as block number 574,143
That's... Before that's 574,142... 574,141... you see they're chronologically ordered.
and you find that you see here who the different miners are.
This was mined by a mining pool called Dpool.
This was mined by mining pool called AntPool, this was mined by BTC.com...
This was mined by Dpool etc. and if we go back to blockchain.com/explorer you will find
the same thing.
The latest block is 574,143.
Same one that we had here.
And so on and so forth. You will find that the miners are the same ones that are listed here etc...
We're looking at the same exact information.
Now let me point out some key things while we're here.
What's interesting about this is that the block explorer will let you know every single transaction
that's been inside the bitcoin blockchain all the way back to the first bitcoin block on the bitcoin
blockchain.
So that's the genesis block.
So if right now I were to go to say the bitcoin mainnet and I go here 0. I'll be able to do a search,
and it will take me back to block height 0.
This is the first block ever.
Right?
And you see here... This is the first block, it's got its own block hash, and the previous block was 0000000...
because there was no block before that.
Right?
And this actually took place on January 3rd 2009.
Remember, we were talking about the fact that if you go inside here and you look at it there's only one
transaction.
And if I go into that transaction I will find that message we spoke about, The Time 03, January 2009
Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks.
You see? All this information is recorded on the bitcoin blockchain permanently and immutably.
Let's go back again to the block explorer.
And while I'm here I'm going to show you some key things here. 'Cause this is a really interesting site
that you can focus on.
You will find constantly updated information for example for the price of bitcoin right now.
This is an average across the major exchanges.
That is because Bitcoin doesn't have one price.
It depends on what somebody is willing to pay for a bitcoin.
And different exchanges have different prices for bitcoin and because bitcoin is traded globally, sometimes
you will find that Bitcoin is trading at a higher price in a certain country and it may be cheaper in
another country. Or you will find that even in the same country, different exchanges will have different
prices for bitcoin.
So there's a variation.
What you have here is the average market price when you go across the major exchanges. You have other
information, such as the hash rate.
This is the measurement of the network's processing power.
That is when you really look at, and I'm going to take you to BTC.com for a moment -
This is the hash rate which is the processing power for these miners.
So this mining pool has a hash rate of 7,827 Petahashes per
second. F2Pool has 5,883.36 Petahashes per second.
This is the hash rate.
And as you can see, different miners have different hash rates.
And as a result, some miners when they have a lot more hash rate are able to mine blocks more often than
others.
However there are no guarantees that you will get all the blocks.
So as we mentioned here, the number one in hash rate, definitely is BTC.com and they've mined a lot
of blocks but not always because it's a competition.
What you find as many of the other mining pools sometimes win as well.
And BTC.com is by no means always the winner.
Often this moves around, Antpool is sometimes the winner, F2 is the winner.
You have different because miners change hash rate. Miners join the network, miners leave the network,
miners sometimes pull out of the Bitcoin network and actually start mining Bitcoin Cash, etc. There's
many variables that will affect the hash rate for the Bitcoin network.
Let's go back to blockchain.com/explorer. Key things I also want to point out to you here (because
it's a very valuable site) is you can go specifically to there's a tab called Data and inside it you
will find a link that says Charts.
This is a priceless page that I want you to go to and I encourage you to follow along with everything
I'm doing to see it for yourself because once you're done with this field trip you will know more about
how to use bitcoin and how to see information in bitcoin than 90 percent of the people out there. If
you can really master this lesson, you'll be able to truly know what bitcoin is all about.
So key things you'll see here...
And this is constantly updated information because as I mentioned the bitcoin blockchain is a public
blockchain and all this information as it grows - blockchain.com constantly updates their charts.
So key things you'll find here... Some of the popular stats:
Obviously the market price is one, the number of transactions per day is very important too. Another
thing I want to point out to you, is what's known as the mempool.
The mempool, or memory pool, is the size of the number of transactions waiting to be confirmed.
They define it as the aggregate size of transactions waiting to be confirmed.
Let me show you what that means.
This is at number of unconfirmed transactions.
This is a live updating list. What you see is all the transactions that are coming into the Bitcoin network.
Let me go one step further and refresh... What you find is that there are 175 transactions
per second that are shown. My screen cannot show you 175 transactions per second
being shown... In fact, what you're seeing here is my computer trying to catch up and keep up with it.
There's just a massive number of transactions constantly coming into bitcoin and you can see every single
one of these transactions. This one is 4 BTC,
That one's 21 bitcoins.
We're looking at these... 128 bitcoins!
There's some really, really large transactions that are constantly moving through the bitcoin blockchain
and you can see it all happening here. Now, as the miners are creating new blocks, what they are doing
is they are all, each mining group actually has a memory pool of their own, in which they collect these
unconfirmed transactions and from these unconfirmed transactions they start assembling blocks and then
they get into competition with the other miners trying to see who will be able to create the latest
block to add to the bitcoin blockchain.
So what you're seeing here is the live Bitcoin network working 24 hours a day, 7 days a week as new
transactions make it into the network.
So let's do something right now.
I'm going to go back now to the blockchain.com/explorer site.
Let me go back here again and what you will find is that you have here all the latest transactions... You
see a number of transactions per block that are coming into these.
But you can also drill down into individual transactions and this is important because say for example
you do a transaction with someone else.
And the other person says "no, that transaction never arrived."
As long as you have the transaction you can actually see if it's been confirmed and added to the bitcoin
blockchain. That is, there's no doubts. If in fact the transaction is confirmed, that means that it's already
been added to the bitcoin blockchain, therefore the transaction happened.
Let's do that right now.
If I go here, and I'm going to look inside the Bitcoin Mainnet, and I'm gonna look for specific transaction.
I can paste the transaction number inside the block explorer, and I can search for it. And the block explorer
will look at the Bitcoin blockchain, and it will find that transaction and give me back the results.
What I find is that this transaction was actually received on December 29, 2017 and it's definitely confirmed
in fact there's been 72,648 blocks since then.
You can see that because it was included in block
501,497
Now the reason why I'm sharing this transaction with you is because I had already told you about this
transaction. And it's a transaction where I hid a message inside.
"We are changing the world one blockchain at a time", and that transaction is recorded permanently and
immutably.
Now here's what's interesting, this happened on December 29, 2017 in block
501,497
And yet when I come back, you will find that we're currently at block
574,144.
Interesting
Key point is that, as you will notice, there has been a new block created since we last looked at this
page.
This latest blocks been created by AntPool and it contains 3,139 transactions.
That block was mined four minutes ago.
Now key things I want to point out to you from this whole perspective as well, is that all of this is
happening 24 hours a day 7 days a week.
And if you ever have any questions about any specific transaction you can simply do your search in here
and one key thing that I want you to do while you're at it is make make sure to visit that link
blockchain.com/btc/unconfirmed-transactions, because as you just heard - we just created
a brand new block.
And that's because from this group of unconfirmed transactions a miner just created another brand new
block.
You see how that unconfirmed transactions number dropped? From 8,000 to 5,000?
And that's because we just got a brand new block. You got back to back blocks in the time that we actually
looked at this little sample.
So it's a really exciting thing that I encourage you to do because this never stops.
It goes on 24 hours a day. Actually...
Let's take a look at what just happened by going back to the block explorer and let me just refresh make
sure I got the latest information - and I find that the latest block right now is mined by BTC.TOP
and is block number 574,145 with
3,282 transactions. We just saw that happen.
Let's go to BTC.com and see what they show...
And if I go, that's correct.
I see the same exact thing.
574,145
And here's your reward.
And this is the latest block.
So again go back to blockchain.com/btc/unconfirmed-transactions and
blockchain.com/explorer and do your own field trip on the bitcoin blockchain.