<p>Contrary to popular belief, mining is not actually solving any problems. There are no math problems that miners are working on to solve. Rather what miners are doing are just hashing data and then seeing if the resulting hash is less than a given target which everyone can calculate independently with data from the blockchain. The work that they are doing is only for securing the Bitcoin blockchain; it is not useful for anything else. So they aren't solving puzzles or problems, they are just doing work to make the Bitcoin blockchain secure.</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2018-02-04T18:27:15.317Z
2018-02-04T18:27:15.317Z
Ava Chow
<p>I understand this might be a simple question but what do cryptocurrency companies do with these problems when you mine. I know you get reward for solving a problem but what will bitcoin do with that?</p>

<bitcoin-core-development>
What does bitcoin actually do with these problems?
Neamus
# What does bitcoin actually do with these problems?

(Asked by: username_0 on 2018-02-04)

I understand this might be a simple question but what do cryptocurrency companies do with these problems when you mine. I know you get reward for solving a problem but what will bitcoin do with that?

**Tags:** bitcoin-core-development


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## 1 answers

### Answer by username_1 on 2018-02-04. Score: 3 | Accepted answer

Contrary to popular belief, mining is not actually solving any problems. There are no math problems that miners are working on to solve. Rather what miners are doing are just hashing data and then seeing if the resulting hash is less than a given target which everyone can calculate independently with data from the blockchain. The work that they are doing is only for securing the Bitcoin blockchain; it is not useful for anything else. So they aren't solving puzzles or problems, they are just doing work to make the Bitcoin blockchain secure.


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