thank you for those answers. I did not realize an SPV was so small it could run on a simple phone.
Regarding nano ledger, my question was how the master key is generated
The master key is just a regular private key with a special name 
the words in the mnemonic key are just mappings to a set of numbers. This is described in BIP39.
For example you have a table and a 2 word mnemonic:
| dog | 001 |
| cat | 010 |
| mouse | 100 |
When your wallet generates a mnemonic like mouse cat this would equal to a (master) private key 100010.
What stops someone from changing the Bitcoin algorithm? For example, Vitalik can make changes to ETH such as going from POW to POS. With that said, what stops someone from making changes to Bitcoin? Is the algorithm for Bitcoin unchangeable? if so how is it unchangeable?
1 Like
All your questions can be answered with one word: consensus.
You can change the Bitcoin algorithm, but if there is no consensus, no one will use it.
Vitalik promised to transition to PoS from the inception of Ethereum and there is ever more growing demand to switch and most of the community is in consensus the switch is necessary. 
3 Likes
Hi Ivan and all the students … There is one topic which i think you didnt cover in the Tx fees part … where does this fee goes?? does it vanish into the BTC space? or does it go to the wallet provider?? Im a bit confused about this … or does it goes to the miners??
It goes to the miners
4 Likes
Miners are incentivized by reward blocks and transactions fees. Miners typically choose and add the transactions with the highest fees because they get to keep those fees.
1 Like
Thanks you, that cleared up a lot of uncertainty.
Are there any restriction imposed by crypto exchanges if you want to withdraw fund?
I had difficulty to withdraw my crypto currency from Bittrex.
Anyone has any ideas? Tks!
Every exchange has its own rules, so I recommend you check their FAQs.
1 Like
Transmitting to miners in ways other than over the Internet would take us to, basically, trusting handwritten transmission, radio transmission, or Morse code. The private key would be exposed to the miner, true, but think of how to ensure that the miners are trustworthy. I would relate this to military operations, during wartime, when it was essential to transmit important messages for safety of our troops. Safety of cryptocurrency, documents, etc. calls for trustworthy miners. The importance of having other means of transmission than Internet is, totally, logical in case of long term Internet disruption. Trustworthy miners are essential to keep private keys, private.
Miners don’t need your private keys to function. They just process your signed transaction, you keep the key for yourself.
2 Likes
you said miner would check his mempool or another node’s
is there any chance that a tx exist in more than one confirmed block? because if i’m not mistaken there is not a single mempool that means another miner would choose it as well and different combination of txs would lead to different hash even with some shared txs.
in other words how all the mempools get update so a tx would not be chosen again?
When nodes receive a block they remove transactions that are part of that block from their mempool, if a UTXO somehow gets spent in a subsequent block, that would make the entire block invalid and would get rejected.
In case when miners mine a block at the same height this might be the case, but eventually one of these blocks will become stale and because of the longest chain rule.
1 Like
My question is :Is moving funds from your exchange to your hardwallet considered a transaction within the Bitcoin Basics realm?
Coinbase being a central type exchange is only as good as the Government
that granted them permission to operate.Part of that agreement is that ,if they deem necessary to look at any or all of that exchanges records and take action against any or all coin holders they can. As far as insurance , who is insuring you , rules in your favor? and will they have any funds ?
1 Like
thanks for your answer.
Yes of course it is, you choose an address where to send the funds to and you will receive it on the wallet you choose. I encourage you to look up the address in a block explorer and verify yourself 
You will notice a bunch of interesting things, for example that exchanges usually batch withdraws into one single transaction to save on space and fees.
2 Likes
thanks again 
thank you so much for the link it helped me understand a bit more with visuals too a real big help for me as a beginner 
1 Like