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comment by fir3drill
fir3drill  ·  3717 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Bitcoin, explained like you are five.

I liked this explanation a lot. I've read quite a few explanations about how the protocol works and this one was the simplest I can remember.

As I understand it, the ledger is updated/downloaded every ten minutes and the miner who completes the has first hash or whatever gets his/her 10 bitcoins.

My question is: how are the transactions recorded and transmitted to others on the network between ledger updates? Is it all done continuously? If everyone is constantly alerted about all transactions, what are miners doing?

I think my questions are a bit beyond the scope of the article, but they are the points I'm hung up on.