also its both
making “a bitcoin” has been a computer science problem since basically computers existed (ya it’s mostly pointless but everything is); what changed was the storage size and not processing power, an unforeseen circumstance
it’s similar to synthesizers for music: when they were created the actual goal was to realistically emulate actual instruments, and whilst people realized how hard this was (it’s synthesizing the attack; the sustain is trivial) hard drive capabilities exploded; so people thought, fuck it, let’s just literally record every little nuance of how the instrument sounds; i have a grand piano VST that is 250gb in size no typo
so with bitcoin the solution was to just write down the entire blockchain as nutty as that wouldve sounded even in the early 2000s; it’s a fucking 400gb text file essentially and whilst we can fit that on our laptops, the bible is 4mb for comparison; this is both an elegant and ridiculously clunky solution to the problem but a solution nonetheless and bitcoin really is a marvelous invention
but you dont care about any of that, you just feel a subtle existential crisis behind how the cryptocurrency markets highlight the ridiculousness of the entire concept, especially traditional financial markets, so, i’m not sure why i taxed my fingers typing when i could’ve jabbed those same fingers in my eyeballs until i went blind or something