Bitcoin works like a decentralized clockwork of value transfer - tick by tick, block by block - without relying on banks, governments, or corporations. At its core, it’s a distributed ledger system, where thousands of nodes around the world come to consensus about who owns what, without ever needing to trust each other.

When someone sends bitcoin, that transaction is broadcast to the network. Miners -specialized computers running proof-of-work algorithms - gather these transactions into a block. They race to solve a cryptographic puzzle, and the first one to crack it gets to add the block to the blockchain and earns a reward: freshly minted bitcoin plus fees.

This process is what keeps the ledger secure and tamper-proof. Each block is cryptographically linked to the previous one, forming an unbreakable chain of history. Try to change one transaction, and you’d need to redo the proof-of-work for every block that follows - an economic near-impossibility.

Bitcoin wallets don’t actually store coins - they store private keys, which are like digital signatures that prove ownership of your bitcoin on the network. When you spend, you’re authorizing the network to move value from your address to another, and that movement is forever etched into Bitcoin’s public record.

The beauty of it all? The rules are enforced by code, not by decree. No one can print more than 21 million. No one can block your transaction. And no one can take your bitcoin if you hold your own keys.

In short: Bitcoin works because it turns money into software - open, neutral, borderless -and puts the user in full control. Trust the code. Verify everything. Run your own node.