How does Bitcoin work?

[bdamenaakter]

Hi everyone,
I am new to this forum, but I have been reading the technical paper behind bitcoin and while I like many of its claimed properties, I would like to see something with a bit more explanation, as I am used from reading other cryptographic papers, which while dense can at least be shown to be wrong. To be able to analyze a system mathematically you need the equations. Pointing at the source code is not a substitute for that.

In a paper I shouldn't be the one who has to figure out why something is true; there should be proofs and a stupid computer should be able to follow it.

I am surprised you already got this far, since I would have expected people to demand that the system is solid first, before using it.

Next to the mathematical points there is also the issue of someone discovering a constructive method to generate blocks. Is there a way to switch to a different hash function if so required?

There is another efficiency issue: how much energy or machine operations of the whole network does it cost to verify one transaction? If it costs more to verify a microtransaction than its value, there seems to be something wrong; it might be that this is a fundamental limitation. A new money system would have to be able to scale billions of users. Is that manageable? If not, why is bitcoin presented as a new money system as opposed to just a cool hack?