I finally found the answer to what I was looking for in this question. I get blockchains, and nonces, and all of that. But what I could not figure out is what part of what is placed as content of the blockchain, the bitcoin itself. I thought that verifying a block, finding its nonce, and mining for bitcoin were two distinct activities. (Not taking the consensus into account) the answer above seems to say it’s not distinct. So:
Is it correct that finding the nonce for a block is more or less equivalent to creating a small fraction of a bitcoin?
If I find the nonce for the next block on the chain, and that creates n bitcoin worth of value (n being of course a small fraction), does it mean that my user ID will be assigned an extra credit of n bitcoin on the chain? The record will show that, after finding the next nonce that the chain needs to grow, my credit will be my previous credit plus n.
Importantly: let’s assume that block 1000 has just been mined. That means that its nonce has been found. Does this mean that I, and everyone else, can only work on finding the nonce for block 1001? Future blocks cannot be mined because they need all the previous blocks to be finalized. And passed blocks are already mined, so nothing needs to be mined about them.
That would mean that the world is not racing to find one bitcoin among all the possible bitcoin values, as I had assumed. For example, they could be trying to find all the possible nonces for a set value, in which case there would be fewer and fewer nonces remaining to be found as time goes on, and each one would be harder and harder to find, but it would be equally possible to find any of the possible remaining nonces. That would be similar to gold: less and less gold exists on the planet, and as more is found, it gets harder and harder to find more.
Instead, only a specific bitcoin fraction can be found at a time, and the world is racing to find that specific one: the nonce for the next block on the chain.
Is that more or less correct?
