Live Blockchain Demo
7. Coinbase
Where does the money come from? Each block starts with a special coinbase transaction that mints new coins to whoever mined the block. Later transactions can only spend money that an earlier coinbase created — you can trace every payment back to the block that minted the funds. This is how Bitcoin issues currency.
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↺ Back to the start Explore the research →
This interactive demo was created by Anders Brownworth and is rebuilt here as a self-hosted, dependency-free version. SHA-256 runs entirely in your browser; blocks turn red when their hash no longer starts with 0000 and green again once re-mined.