> the computations needed to keep and confirm transactions AFAIK, that's effectively what mining is. From my understanding, transactions exist in a limbo state

> the computations needed to keep and confirm transactions AFAIK, that's effectively what mining is. From my understanding, transactions exist in a limbo state (where they're relayed around the bitcoin network) until they're included in a mined block and become part of the blockchain. A "mined block" is basically just a list of transactions (including a coinbase transaction, which is the new bitcoins), the merkel root of the previous blocks, and some other data such that the hash of the entire thing is suitable, as determined by the network difficulty. Thus, mining and confirming transactions are effectively one and the same. Sorry for the poor (and possibly incorrect) explanation, I'm still wrapping my head around it too.