IEEE Spectrum June, 2013 - 11

$2
Billion
LosT vALue of BiTcoin
during 24 hours of TrAding
in ApriL.

GeorGe Frey/BloomBerG via Getty imaGes

The
BiTcoin Arms
rAce is on!
Powerful mining machines
are changing the nature
of the popular cryptocurrency

Bitcoin, the cryptocurrency powered by a decentralized peer-to-peer
network of computers, has been hot this season. With the exchange rate
bobbing around US $100, those involved in creating new bitcoins-and upholding
the network that makes them valuable-have become locked in an arms race
of sorts, seeking new, powerful machines that will enrich them but that could
also destabilize the nascent virtual money.
Bitcoins exist only as records on a virtual ledger that's shared over a global
network, each node of which must agree to changes in the accounting-
payments or receipt of payments. Arriving at this consensus takes massive
amounts of computing power.
You can use your bitcoins even if you're not plugged into the network that runs
the operation, but there is a strong incentive to help out. At an average of once
every 10 minutes, the software spits out a handful of newly minted bitcoins to
one computer, as a kind of lottery payment to the people (referred to as miners)
who run it. The way you enter this lottery is by solving "hashes," trivial functions that reformulate meaningful data sets into unique strings of letters and
numbers. Each time a computer completes a hash, it's as if it has filled out

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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Spectrum June, 2013

IEEE Spectrum June, 2013 - Cover1
IEEE Spectrum June, 2013 - Cover2
IEEE Spectrum June, 2013 - 1
IEEE Spectrum June, 2013 - 2
IEEE Spectrum June, 2013 - 3
IEEE Spectrum June, 2013 - 4
IEEE Spectrum June, 2013 - 5
IEEE Spectrum June, 2013 - 6
IEEE Spectrum June, 2013 - 7
IEEE Spectrum June, 2013 - 8
IEEE Spectrum June, 2013 - 9
IEEE Spectrum June, 2013 - 10
IEEE Spectrum June, 2013 - 11
IEEE Spectrum June, 2013 - 12
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IEEE Spectrum June, 2013 - 17
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IEEE Spectrum June, 2013 - 19
IEEE Spectrum June, 2013 - 20
IEEE Spectrum June, 2013 - 21
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IEEE Spectrum June, 2013 - 26
IEEE Spectrum June, 2013 - 27
IEEE Spectrum June, 2013 - 28
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IEEE Spectrum June, 2013 - 30
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IEEE Spectrum June, 2013 - 32
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IEEE Spectrum June, 2013 - 34
IEEE Spectrum June, 2013 - 35
IEEE Spectrum June, 2013 - 36
IEEE Spectrum June, 2013 - 37
IEEE Spectrum June, 2013 - 38
IEEE Spectrum June, 2013 - 39
IEEE Spectrum June, 2013 - 40
IEEE Spectrum June, 2013 - 41
IEEE Spectrum June, 2013 - 42
IEEE Spectrum June, 2013 - 43
IEEE Spectrum June, 2013 - 44
IEEE Spectrum June, 2013 - 45
IEEE Spectrum June, 2013 - 46
IEEE Spectrum June, 2013 - 47
IEEE Spectrum June, 2013 - 48
IEEE Spectrum June, 2013 - 49
IEEE Spectrum June, 2013 - 50
IEEE Spectrum June, 2013 - 51
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IEEE Spectrum June, 2013 - 58
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IEEE Spectrum June, 2013 - 60
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IEEE Spectrum June, 2013 - 63
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IEEE Spectrum June, 2013 - 65
IEEE Spectrum June, 2013 - 66
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IEEE Spectrum June, 2013 - 68
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IEEE Spectrum June, 2013 - 70
IEEE Spectrum June, 2013 - 71
IEEE Spectrum June, 2013 - 72
IEEE Spectrum June, 2013 - 73
IEEE Spectrum June, 2013 - 74
IEEE Spectrum June, 2013 - 75
IEEE Spectrum June, 2013 - 76
IEEE Spectrum June, 2013 - 77
IEEE Spectrum June, 2013 - 78
IEEE Spectrum June, 2013 - 79
IEEE Spectrum June, 2013 - 80
IEEE Spectrum June, 2013 - 81
IEEE Spectrum June, 2013 - 82
IEEE Spectrum June, 2013 - 83
IEEE Spectrum June, 2013 - 84
IEEE Spectrum June, 2013 - 85
IEEE Spectrum June, 2013 - 86
IEEE Spectrum June, 2013 - 87
IEEE Spectrum June, 2013 - 88
IEEE Spectrum June, 2013 - Cover3
IEEE Spectrum June, 2013 - Cover4
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https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/ieee/spectrum_na_0712
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/ieee/spectrum_na_0612
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/ieee/spectrum_na_0512
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/ieee/spectrum_na_0412
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/ieee/spectrum_na_0312
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https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/ieee/spectrum_na_0112
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/ieee/spectrum_na_1211
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/ieee/spectrum_na_1111
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https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/ieee/spectrum_na_0911
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/ieee/spectrum_na_0811
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/ieee/spectrum_na_0711
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/ieee/spectrum_na_0611
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https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/ieee/spectrum_na_0211
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/ieee/spectrum_na_0111
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/ieee/spectrum_na_1210
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https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/ieee/spectrum_na_1010
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/ieee/spectrum_na_0910
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/ieee/spectrum_na_0810
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/ieee/spectrum_na_0710
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/ieee/spectrum_na_0610
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/ieee/spectrum_na_0510
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/ieee/spectrum_na_0410
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https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/ieee/spectrum_na_0707
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/ieee/spectrum_na_0607
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/ieee/spectrum_na_0507
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/ieee/spectrum_na_0407
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/ieee/spectrum_na_0307
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