The timechain is the history of all bitcoin transactions ever made. New transactions are added to the timechain with a game of probabilities called mining.
Every 10 minutes there is a worldwide, winner-takes-all competition to see who can record new transactions onto the timechain first. The winner is rewarded with newly created bitcoin, plus the fees from all the transactions they just finalized.
At the time of this writing, the reward is ~6.25 BTC. This is valued around $300,000 USD. Yes, that's over a quarter-million dollars being given away every 10 minutes.
This game is driven by self-interest, yet every participant ends up benefiting. The rules of the game are 100% transparent and cannot be changed. There is no referee; every participant double-checks the work of every other participant, cheaters are simply ignored.
The real reward from mining is that everyone on the global Bitcoin network can now agree upon something. Isn't that a miracle! Even enemies can look at the shared timechain and say: "Yes, we have analysed the timechain and neither you nor I have cheated one another." Mining creates an irrefutable, immutable, shared reality.
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