A Survey on Bitcoin Cryptocurrency and its Mining

Blockchain technology opportunities in Kurdistan, applications and challenges

“…Blockchain is defined as a chain of blocks which store transaction information over a network of computers called nodes. All the nodes contain the same transactions history which makes the blockchain a decentralized system as there is no central point of control [7]. In traditional systems, there is a central database which stores the data and is managed by a centralized authentication system [8].…”

“…The consensus mechanism ensures integrity and consistency of the blockchain. Once the blocks are added, they cannot be altered without altering the subsequent blocks, because tampering a block will cause an error in the previous block and so on [7,10]. For this reason, the blockchain is considered a secure system as it is nearly impossible to tamper its ledger [9].…”

“…However, there are several other applications and use cases of the blockchain in a variety of sectors. The following describes some of the blockchain applications, and their opportunities and challenges in Kurdistan [2,7,15].…”

“…Traditional currencies are controlled by governments and all transactions are recorded and authorized by centralized third parties like banks [7]. On the other hand, Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies' transactions and payments can be made directly without the need of centralized third party or middle men; instead it uses mining process to endorse Bitcoin transactions as shown in Figure 5 [15,19].…”

“…There are many benefits of using Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies in financial transactions. One of them is the elimination of unnecessary fees which are paid to the middle men, for instance, international money transfers could be achieved with a lower cost as well as the processing time is faster compared to the traditional currencies [7]. Another advantage is the availability and security of the blockchain network [20].…”