Bitcoin’s blockchain. Transactions that record transfer of ownership of those coins are created and validated according to a protocol—a list of rules that define how things work and which therefore govern updates to the ledger. The protocol is implemented by software—an app—that participants run on their computers. The machines running the apps are called ‘nodes’ of the network. Each node independently validates all pending transactions wherever they arise, and updates its own record of the ledger with validated blocks of confirmed transactions. Specialist nodes, called miners, bundle together
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