Monthly Archives: April 2015

SHA’ing on your computer

By | April 23, 2015

Understand how bitcoin mining works can seem like a huge task. They key is to break it down piece by piece. The first step is to understand what SHA256 is. Search on Google and read all you can about it. Then read this document: fips-180-4.pdf. The Federal Information Processing Standards Publication. Spend 2 weeks reading… Read More »

What does upside down V and plus inside a circle mean?

By | April 19, 2015

If you have been looking at bitcoins and in particular the SHA256 algorithm, you would have come across this formula: Maj(x,y,z)=(x∧y)⊕(x∧z)⊕(y∧z) Ch(x,y,z)=(x∧y)⊕(¬x∧z) The first thing I said to myself was “What the heck does this mean? Do I need a PhD to understand this?” Well, the good news is that the meaning is pretty simple… Read More »

What does the bitcoin target really mean – part 2

By | April 8, 2015

I’ve done a lot of reading trying to figure out what a bitcoin target really means and after reading over 10 different explainations, over several days, I think I finally understand. Here are some of the basics. 1. You’ll see people talk about the maximum target of: 0x00000000FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF. What the heck does this mean and… Read More »

Real example of biased exponent of a number

By | April 6, 2015

After lots of Googling to try and understand what an exponent bias really means, I came across this video which explains it pretty well. When someone talks about biasing the exponent, it means trying to represent negative numbers with positive numbers so you don’t have to put a negative sign in front. It is just… Read More »