Your understanding of Bitcoin is OK by ANALOGY by not by technical implementation. Bitcoin creates new BTC every block from nothing. But mathematically the total number of BTC that can be created from nothing is defined by the protocol. In theory you could view it as a genesis block that has all funds and each mined block unlocks funds from genesis block. Economically they are the same.
In the genesis block for Bitcoin there existed exactly 100 unspendable BTC. After block 2 there existed 100 BTC... and so on until today with 10+ million BTC.
Thanks for your response BM. So many points of confusion in relating what I've learned here about PTS (and by inference BTC since they're both PoW) and other answers I've got about what mining is exactly.
OK, so my friend was right about miners actually creating bitcoins. Fact committed to long term storage.
Trying to understand your last sentence:
BTC block 1: 100 BTC defined,
but unspendable, meaning they can't be transferred|sold|exchanged right? If not what does
unspendable mean?
BTC block 2: still 100 BTC? What, didn't you mean to say there were more? What exactly happened to create block 2? None of the original BTC were transfered, and apparently no mining took place or there would be more than 100 BTC. This does not show a progression at all. I'm more confused.
So did bitcoin have a literal genesis block of 100 BTC as you stated above, and was it different in
fundamental ways (i.e. not by magnitude) from the PTS genesis block? I have asked about PTS genesis block before, and was told it defined stakeholders and their stake right from the get go, and that if someone bought PTS from an exchange it was b/c one of the PTS stakeholders from the genesis block sold (i.e. transferred) some portion of their holdings to the exchange. Sounds like I was misinformed.
If I wasn't misinformed, I'm having a hard time reconciling a pre-existing stake in a PTS genesis block with mining units into existence. In the PTS model in my head mining only validates transfers, it does not create more PTS. Initial investors in BitShares-PTS (ProtoShares) donated BTC to secure a stake in the PTS genesis block. The PTS miners served only to sign / validate transfers of those shares. New addresses can be created but addresses are just a potential destination for a transfer.
Even what a "Block" of transactions are. It makes sense when there are lots of addresses and transfers but I don't get it when you go back in time to the original activities (what addresses and units exist, how units are transferred and the role of miners in such transfers).
I STILL don't have a lock on the basics, and it greatly disturbs me, especially when you say I got it conceptually but not practically. I don't think it's necessary to understand the mathematical basis for the cryptography to understand the flow of units and the role of miners. But I do need to understand if there are major mechanistic differences between various PoW chains like BTC and PTS.
Can you recommend a good video, podcast, or overview description of exactly how bitcoin got off the ground, the early transactions? I think you tried to do that but I don't see a progression when there are the same number of BTC for block 1 and 2.