Author: raeatoussaint

As a strategy consultant for digital solutions, I’m comfortable creating presentations and organizing meetings with executives to enhance revenue quality. I enjoy partnering with sales to advance our brand’s reputation and maximize B2B market share. As a business professional, I use a wide range of software applications to help my clients succeed in digital marketing and automating their supply chain. I’m also an enthusiastic student of blockchain and web 3 protocols. I help customers strategize eCommerce, Supply chain, and technology implementation.

Posted on February 10, 2026February 10, 2026 by raeatoussaint — Leave a comment

Tokenized Gold: Cryptocurrency and Blockchain Protocols

The legacy finance system of banking and the payments industry is very fragmented. Dollar stablecoins are needed in most of the world because it is so hard for average people to get bank accounts with dollars. These foreign businesses and consumers need to securely move their money as their local currencies lose value versus the dollar. Stablecoins offer cheaper and faster movement, a programmable digital dollar, and 24/7 access to those dollars.

In our podcast Crypto and Down, we discuss the role of stablecoins in the blockchain ecosystem and their differences in our February 4th Episode. Watch here:

Different Types of Stablecoins

There are 4 main types of stablecoins that run on blockchains Fiat collateralized, Crypto collateralized, Algorithmic, and Commodity collateralized. Fiat Collateralized Stablecoins like USDT and USDC are the most popular. These tokens are backed by fiat currency, government treasuries, or cash. Crypto Collateralized stablecoins are backed by a basket of different crypto currencies. Stablecoins like DAI are over collateralized by cryptocurrencies like Ethereum and others. Meaning for every one dollar of DAI issued, you would need two dollars of Ethereum. MakerDAO is a company that issues and collateralizes DAI through various smart contracts. Algorithmic Stablecoins are backed via smart contracts or algorithms. These rules control the circulating supply and the price of the token. For example, if the token lost its dollar peg tokens would be issued or removed from the overall supply to adjust the price back to a dollar. Popular coins of this type include USDD and Frax. Commodity Stablecoins are usually backed by physical assets like metals, oil, real estate, etc. The most popular versions are Tether Gold (XAUT & XAUT0) and Paxos Gold (PAXG).

An overlooked reason for the increase in the price of Gold is that companies Paxos and Tether are continually buying this metal. Of course, other buyers include Central Banks and countries like Poland and Azerbaijan purchasing gold for their reserves. Paxos and Tether provide different infrastructure models for stablecoins issuance. They are competing in emerging markets and the United States. These leaders in the Stablecoin space bring tokenized Gold to the market with verifiable reserves. Gold backed crypto currencies are on the rise. Buyers of these assets get access to gold without having to store it physically. Tokenized gold allows people to have verifiable fractional ownership.

Hyperliquid: The Rise of Commodity Perpetuals

Another protocol seemingly benefiting from the surge in metal prices is Hyperliquid. In late January of 2026, Hyperliquid token rose during a commodities trading frenzy on the platform. Hyperliquid is a blockchain that enables Perpetual futures. Perpetual futures, aka perps, are crypto derivative contracts that allow traders to speculate on an asset’s price without an expiration date or ownership of the underlying token.

The token prices and activities have increased on top Perpetuals platforms with the rise of gold and silver. This trading frenzy generated more fees for the Hyperliquid platform. Hyperliquid uses the revenue from these fees to buy back and burn the Hype token. This makes the price action bullish in the eyes of many but this is still up for debate on whether this buyback model will continue to drive price appreciation.

Tether Impacts Gold Markets

Per Coindesk, Tether is buying close to 1 billion dollars worth of Gold every month. Tether plans to continue these efforts for the next few months. Per Coindesk, Tether is buying two tons of gold per week. And they’ve added 140 ton stockpile that is worth around 24 billion. They may be hedging their bets that the United States will renew their efforts in taking Tether to court. Tether has two tickers for tokenized Gold XAUT and XAUT0. The former is deployed on blockchains such as Ethereum and Avalanche; while the latter according to the UXAUT0 website, “brings programmable, omnichain mobility to one of the world’s most trusted store of value. XAUt0 enables fast, secure, and cost-efficient cross-chain transfers while maintaining a strict 1:1 backing with XAUt0, redeemable for physical gold held in Swiss vaults”.

Paxos Gold USD Flows

Paxos is a blockchain and tokenization infrastructure platform. They operate an internet based financial system and offer a suite of services to institutional clients such as banks and FinTech companies. For example, PayPal, Nubank, Venmo, interactive brokers, and others use Paxos to offer crypto services. Paxos’ gold token experiences massive inflows from crypto investors. An influx of US dollars have flowed into the Paxos Gold protocol. Their gold tokenized gold reserves sit in London vaults.

The Paxos Value Proposition

I watched an interview with Raol Paul and Paxos Co-Founder and CEO, Charles Cascarilla. This was very interesting and insightful because it is rare to hear directly from a builder/founder in the crypto space. Charles over the past decade has set his company into a position to capitalize on the United States push into cryptocurrency and stablecoins. After watching their discussion, I came away with a better understanding of Paxos value proposition and a framework to view this new era in cryptocurrency. You can find the full interview here :

Paxos solutions and services combine infrastructure and tokenization. Their wallets enable firms to launch tokens, buy and sell crypto. They also allow merchants to accept payment in stablecoins and turn those payments into cash when necessary. The solutions they provide are a gold token and other tokenized dollars through stablecoins. They are now issuing a yield bearing stablecoin. Charles described how Paxos’s neutral infrastructure is key to their success and value proposition that make them attractive to a variety of institutions. It is irresponsible for institutions to rely on digital networks that are provided by competitors.

Charles described how Paxos’s stablecoin offerings differ from the Tether and Circle in that Paxos gives their stable token as a cash equivalent. Anyone who purchases a USDC or USDT is giving these companies a zero interest loan. These companies are taking that loaned dollar and purchasing US treasuries and other assets while the customer assumes the liability. Instead, Paxos set up their stablecoin’s through a trust to be a cash equivalent. Per Charles, no matter what happens to the company Paxos, users of their stablecoins will always be able to redeem. He also believes that this crypto cycle is a fundamental driven cycle, instead of narrative driven. In the past, Crypto cycle participation was mostly driven by price. Charles expects that all financial institutions will be launching crypto and stablecoin applications in the near future.

Bankruptcy Risk

Famous investor Michael Burry, known for predicting the subprime mortgage crises in 2008. He is warning investors that if bitcoin’s price continues to drop silver and gold may fall along with it. He suggests that late January to early February’s big sell off in Gold and Silver was attributed to bitcoin’s selloff. He sees continued price depreciation in bitcoin leading to bankruptcies for crypto holding companies and bitcoin miners. In his sub stack he posted a chart saying he looks at patterns and the price of Bitcoin is in a similar pattern as the 2020 – 2022 timeframe. Michael says, “What rescued the markets from the grip of a banking crisis in 2023 was the AI trade”

Even with the historic gains in the metal markets there is still significant risk to cryptocurrency and metal investors as these sectors have become intertwined. Since Paxos and Tether claim to have the actual reserves for their tokenized gold they may be able to withstand a major downturn in the market. Time will tell if these two companies are less risky than traditional exposure to metals through ETFs and paper where the companies offering these products don’t have the reserves to back the issuance.

Posted on January 22, 2026January 23, 2026 by raeatoussaint

Blockchain and Cryptocurrency Trends: January 2026

January is the time for new year resolutions and ironing out investment plans for the year. I’ve researched last year’s analytical trends in blockchain and cryptocurrency to better predict the opportunities for profit. Let’s begin with Cryptocurrency and Blockchain. Research from Coindesk found that value is becoming more isolated to the application layer. For example, L1s capture 90% of the market share in terms of their Market capitalization. However, they are only collecting 12% of fees generated. Economic forces are pushing down the price of Layer 1 blockchains allowing more inflows and competition between blockchains. Essentially, layer 1 blockchain security and throughput became commoditized.

Progressing through 2026 the narratives I will monitor are Real World Assets (RWA), Decentralized Exchanges (DEX), and Non-Custodial Protocols. Below are application-level narratives that drove prices the past two years.

Profitable Crypto Narratives 2024 and 2025 from **DeFi Llama**

RWAs are split into 3 segments: Treasuries, Money Markets of Corporate Securities, and Commodities. Tokenized versions of Gold from Paxos and Tether (PAXG and XAUT) make up over 80% of commodity activity. Per Cryptoslate, Ondo finance controls 51.6 by value of the RWA market.

Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Networks (DePin) is a category that is seeming to gain momentum given the rise of AI funding and the push towards more data centers. This massive movement of capital is driving up the price of memory and everyday electronics. There may be opportunities for these projects to find more use cases and provide an outlet for new infrastructure to support the move to a new type of data storage and telecommunications.

A snapshot on January 18th from Messari shows the mindshare and sentiment for different sectors in the blockchain ecosystem. Some of the cryptocurrencies that I will monitor fall into sectors that have increased month over month.

Since the GENIUS ACT passed the United States House of Representatives and was signed into law by President Trump stablecoin projects are on the rise. Banks, Fintechs, and US government entities have all launched stable tokens in the past year. The State of Wyoming launched their State backed stablecoin frontier (FRNT) this month. There are carveouts in the Bill that allow non-custodial protocols to interact with stablecoins and banking infrastructure without needing banking licenses. There is an opportunity for developers, investors, and businesses to partner with these non-custodial protocols in order to build on stablecoin technology. The Trump’s family stablecoin and crypto project World Liberty FI partnered with the protocol Dolomite. This one example FinTech and banks incorporating blockchain protocols into their business models.

Blockchain Performance and Prediction Markets:

January Crypto Watch List:

The DTCC (Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation) will use the CANTON Network (CC) to tokenize their securities. Canton’s value proposition is a privacy based blockchain for institutions wholesale settlements. This project falls into the RWA sector and won’t be the only blockchain that the DTCC uses. JP Morgan recently announced they will tokenize securities. Canton offers price appreciation exposure to its cryptocurrency as the network grows and the opportunity to become involved as a validator.

GEODNET’s (GEOD) purpose is to promote and deploy the world’s largest RTK network for everyone. RTK allows for positional tracking using satellites. Considering the massive investment into self-driving cars and autonomous drones, this may prove to be a long-term investment that includes digital and physical infrastructure.

GEODNET Income Statement from DeFi Llama — DeFi Llama.com

TRON (TRX) is a leader in global remittance. Stablecoin balances are driven by centralized exchange settlements, offshore payments, and custodial flows. They’ve had a steady growth in price performance the past few years. If the Tron blockchain maintains steady revenue and the number of active wallets increases so will the price.

DOLO is a decentralized exchange (DEX) that offers lending, borrowing, and margin trading services. Their recent partnership with WLFI is a sign that WLFI is serious about using non custodial services to gain stablecoin market share. I will monitor their liquidity, revenue and volume for insight into the protocol’s profitability and measure USD inflows for continued growth. Time will tell if this protocol will be a long-term play.

DOLO Revenue Liquidity Volume Price — DeFillama.com

Prediction Markets:

I’m betting on the prediction that China will invade Taiwan by June. It has been summarized by experts that the ideal time for China to invade Taiwan would be between the months of March and May due to weather conditions. As of writing this, the odds on Polymarket are 7%.

My next pick is for the Iranian leader to be out by the end of 2026. PolyMarket has the odds at 50% so there isn’t a huge upside. However, the man is almost 90 years old, and the recent riots and mass killings make me assume he’ll have to go one way or another. As I heard it said on the Geopolitical Cousins podcast this could be a scenario where the CEO is replaced and the board of directors stays on.

Stay ahead of the trends:

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Posted on June 27, 2025June 27, 2025 by raeatoussaint

How A Beauty Brand Increased E-commerce Conversion in 2025

A large beauty and skincare brand, known for shipping across multiple services, experienced a decline in e-commerce traffic over the past few years. Their focus is on improving their mobile user experience (UX) and brainstorming innovative ideas.

Website Analysis And Digital Strategy

We conducted an extensive audit covering the buyer journey from the homepage, category, product pages, evaluated search optimization, and assessed core web vitals. Based on our findings in these areas, I created unique plan of actionable digital marketing strategies was devised to increase conversions, page views, and reduce cart abandonment.

Enhancing the Homepage: A Digital Storefront

Build Trust and Clearly Set Expectations: Ensured the homepage clearly communicates the brand’s value, product offerings, and services.
Hero Image Design: Created a compelling hero image to showcase products and highlight the unique value proposition, including product manufacturing, testing, and ingredient details.

Making the Website User and SEO Friendly

On-Page SEO Optimization: Added page titles and enriched content with keyword-based strategies to improve search visibility.
Interactive Product Pages: Enhanced product pages to tell a story by incorporating AI tools that allow customers to virtually try on products, such as “Try on – find your shade” for lipsticks or “Try on – match your foundation.”
SEO Strategy: Keep updated on recommendations, reporting, every on-page task and technical change with EVISIO Software.

Alleviate Customer Concerns to Increase Checkout Rates:

Bundle Options and Shipping/Returns Icons: Added product bundling options and showcased icons for shipping and returns strategies on product pages.
Value Proposition in Shopping Cart: Highlighted the brand’s value proposition in the shopping cart, including customer reviews and brand partnerships to build trust.
Simplifying Shipping Options: Reduced the number of shipping options to avoid overwhelming customers, minimizing ‘analysis paralysis.’

By Implementing Our Digital Strategies, the Client Aimed For The Following Results

Increase conversion rates by improving the overall shopping experience.
Enhance page views through better SEO practices and engaging product pages.
Reduce cart abandonment by addressing common customer pain points and simplifying the checkout process.

This digital consultant case study highlights the effectiveness of a comprehensive, customer-focused approach to e-commerce strategy for a beauty and skincare brand. By addressing key aspects of the user experience and simplifying the checkout process, the brand is positioned to revitalize its e-commerce traffic and conversion rates. Search engine optimization strategies can be monitored Utilizing Evisio Project manage Software. The actionable strategies provided a clear roadmap for sustainable growth and improved customer satisfaction.

Posted on June 27, 2025 by raeatoussaint

Best Digital Growth Strategy for B2B Apparel E-commerce in 2025

B2B Apparel Company, a 30-year-old custom t-shirt printing business, has recently undergone a change in ownership. The new owner recognizes the urgent need to revamp their archaic website and enhance their digital marketing efforts. The business primarily serves B2B clients and has historically relied on face-to-face interactions for client acquisition. Ownership aims to modernize the business to attract more clients and increase revenue.

eCommerce Product Challenges

Since the current website core web vital stats had a poor rating. There was no clear path to purchase or navigational structure that made a users buyer journey seamless. In a discovery call with the customer they gave a list of challenges they faced and we brainstormed a list of objectives that would make an impact on their business.

The website is outdated and lacks modern e-commerce functionalities.
Lack of a structured email marketing strategy and the ability to capture emails.
Current business focus is on a few large clients that have a minimal digital presence.
The need to show value with their logistics carriers and integrate them seamlessly into the website.

eCommerce Strategy

Revamp the outdated website to improve user experience and functionality.
Implement a structured email marketing strategy.
Optimize the website for digital marketing.
Enable online order submissions.
Increase revenue by expanding the client base.

Ecommerce Product Management Strategy

Website Redesign Steps

Select a modern, fitting theme that aligns with the brand.
Improve product discovery on the homepage with organized navigation, product collections, and clear calls to action.
Add engaging content such as a “Why Buy from Us” and “Hello from the Owner” video.

Functional Enhancements:

Enable online order submissions for both individual and corporate clients.
Ensure robust search functionality by SKU, product name, or part number.
Integrate pivotal information around invoices, quotes, and estimates.

SEO and Analytics:

Install Google Search Console, google tag manager, and Google Analytics 4 to monitor website performance.
Use EVISIO project management software to identify and address SEO opportunities.
Improve page speed by compressing images and removing unnecessary widgets.

Digital Product Marketing Strategies

Email Marketing:

Develop a structured email marketing strategy using platforms like Klaviyo or Mailchimp.
Give customers an incentive to leave their emails. Provide them with a leave behind collateral like a buyer guide, catalog, White paper if they enter their email address.
Send regular newsletters, promotional offers, and updates to engage with clients.

Content Strategy:

Produce consistent, high-quality content including blog posts, videos, and social media updates.
Create a content calendar to organize and schedule posts.

Local Digital Marketing:

Leverage platforms like Hibu for local digital marketing to reach small businesses in the area.
Optimize for local searches by including relevant keywords and location-based content.

Platform Selection:

Evaluate Shopify or BigCommerce for their scalability, app ecosystem, and API functionality.
Consider the pros and cons of each platform to determine the best fit for the business needs.

ERP Integration:

Integrate the existing ERP system with the new e-commerce platform to streamline operations and improve efficiency.

Security and Compliance:

Ensure the new website complies with data protection regulations and provides a secure shopping experience for clients.

Product Strategy Implementation

Website Redesign:

Benchmark current performance metrics and define clear redesign goals.
Protect high-performing SEO pages and analyze competitors for best practices.
Choose the right software and platform to support the business needs.

Content Creation and Marketing:

Develop a content strategy that includes regular blog posts, videos, and social media updates.
Implement a structured email marketing campaign to engage with clients regularly.

Local SEO:

Optimize the website for local searches and leverage local digital marketing platforms.
Use SEO tools like EVISIO project management software and best practices to improve search engine rankings and drive traffic to the website.

By implementing these strategies, my customer aims to

Enhance user experience and functionality of the current website, while planning steps to migrate to a new platform.
Increase brand visibility and attract more clients through organic traffic and monitor implementations with the EVISIO project management tool for SEO.
Improve operational efficiency through ERP integration.
Drive revenue growth by expanding the client base and leveraging digital marketing.

This customer’s focus on modernizing their website, optimizing digital marketing efforts, and implementing structured email campaigns will position the business for sustained growth and increased revenue. By addressing current challenges and leveraging strategic tools and platforms, leadership can transform the business into a more robust and competitive entity in the custom t-shirt printing industry.

Posted on January 1, 2025January 24, 2025 by raeatoussaint

Best Ways To Design An Ecommerce Home Page in 2025

The Digital Storefront

An ecommerce company’s homepage is essentially the digital storefront. It is the anchor of a website. The type of industry will dictate how to layout the most effective design. Ultimately, you should clearly showcase benefits of your business and provide relevant information to new and returning visitors.

A well-designed homepage for mobile and desktop will positively impact trust, set expectations, and guide users through their journey to a purchase or taking a desired action.

What key Information should I have on my homepage?

Consumers may land on a homepage for a variety of reasons. They may have come directly by typing in the website URL, through a google search, from a paid advertisement. Therefore, it is crucial to differentiate your brand by clearly displaying a value proposition, an intuitive menu, benefits section, well-placed calls to action for contact, product, or services. Key information should be placed above the fold. “Above the fold” is content people see on a website before scrolling.

What is a Value Proposition on a homepage?

A value proposition explains a brand’s competitive advantage. It is a concise sentence that affirm your brand to returning users and give insight to new customers. This value proposition statement can speak to how does the product/service improve the customer’s situation. It also may show the expected benefits of the product’s impact, and how this product/service is different than the competition. The most impactful value proposition is front and center and supported with additional content.

What is Social Proof ?

Leveraging both product reviews and broader customer testimonials. Well-placed testimonials in text or video can help alleviate concerns, build trust, and be a deciding factor in purchasing decisions. Social proof can come from high value customers, industry experts, local or national publications.

Where should I put Contact Information on a website?

Make contact information clearly visible to your customers. The navigation and the website footer are great places to put this information. Let us not forget the other elements that demonstrate site security: trust badges and SSL certificate. These signal trustworthiness to consumers and impact cart abandonment.

How to optimize the User Experience on a homepage

Ensure users have a great experience on the homepage by continually improving load speed, visual design, and personalization. Make it easy for users to navigate and find call to action buttons. However, do not distract them.

Keep the homepage design simple by avoiding visual complexity. Unnecessary copy, images, more color, and lights variations can give the user too much visual cues to track. Too much visual chaos ultimately makes a bad UX. The goal is to communicate effectively while using the least number of elements.

Why is homepage speed important to the User experience?

Let’s focus on speed. The faster the website the more likely that customers will convert. Since, just a few milliseconds of delay can reduce conversion it is important that the mobile version of homepage of your website loads quickly. Watch out for server performance impacted by too manly plugins, large image size, and older code structure. These are just a few of the things that may slow down a website and hamper conversion.

How to personalize a homepage?

Make users feel the website is tailored just for them with a personalized experience. Serve user product and category recommendations based of their previous browsing history. Another quick way to make a personalized experience is showcasing abandoned cart items to returning users.

The Buyer Journey Begins on the homepage

A clear path to purchase with calls to action that begin in the hero image is great way to guide users on their journey. These are homepage best practices that help convert sales.

Ensure category pages easily sorted or filtered with a clear path to navigating through the site.
Display product page reviews using high quality images.
Mention or link to the return policy and offer delivery expectations
Advertise free shipping option for the cost sensitive customer.

Whether to have a Hero image that is static, or auto-slide carousel is something that should be A/B tested. Some brands will have a hero image slider but also static elements. The hero image should have the value proposition along with main calls to action and trust indicators.

How should you style Calls to Action on a homepage?

Where should you place categories on a homepage?

Placing categories on the homepage can help mobile users. This helps them find product offerings without having to search in the menu. Feature your top products as well. They can be features as best sellers or seasonal. However, the key is to order them in a way to get the most conversions.

Best Ways to Design the Menu and Navigation

The destination categories and subcategories should be understood with clear names to avoid confusion. Overall, the navigation should be one of the most noticeable elements on the homepage. A mega menu with banners, box, or contrasting colors will help in this regard.

If your website is more product focused ensure that the transactional menu is visually prominent compared to the content menu. The transactional menu should be larger in size and can be placed front and center of the homepage or vertically down the left side of the page.

Be specific and descriptive with navigation labels so that visitors can understand where on the website they are. A poor navigation may lead to customer abandoning the website when they can’t find the product or page they want. It is important that homepage navigation is simple.

Onsite Search Optimization Tactics

Since more e e-commerce shoppers use mobile devices, it is essential to keep these searchers moving through the website. A menu should be smooth across devices. A great way to make it more effective is to include search bar along with a benefits/value bar, seen on every page. If your website has a large catalog, an optimized onsite search experience eliminates barriers between visitors and their desires.

Best practices for onsite search experience:

Basic On-site search helps users find the exact products on websites by matching keywords. However, an optimized On-site search will have more robust user experience features

Leverage the No Results Page. Show user alternative search suggestions, contextual category links, broader matching content, or details to contact support.
Use AI to improve imperfect input by searchers. For example, manage numbers and special characters and allow for common misspellings and typos.
Inspire Input and show faster results with Predictive Search. This will show result suggestions from the first character’s a user types in the search bar.
Use Google Analytics search terms report to see what site visitors are searching and if the website is delivering results.

It’s important to have a clearly visible search box and optimized on-site search function. The Search Box is an element with potential to increase organic sessions, sitewide conversions and time spent on a website.

Important elements that make up a website footer

Be as transparent as possible with information in the footer of the website. Consumers are drawn to retailers and brands that are forthcoming with information tied to customer service. For example. the ordering process, shipping costs, return policies, guarantees, and warranties.

Website Footer Elements

Display essential contact information, such as email address, phone number, and physical address, for customers seeking assistance or inquiries.
Include a clear and enticing call-to-action (CTA) that leads users to complete desired actions, such as signing up for newsletters or exploring promotions.
Payment and Security Icons displaying payment and security icons in the footer assures customers of a secure shopping experience.
Offering a sitemap or site index in the footer will help users find specific pages quickly, especially if you have a larger ecommerce website. Lastly, ensure the footer includes links to accessibility statements, ADA compliance, and other relevant regulatory information.

Article Sources¹²³⁴

Rae-asherel Toussaint

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Posted on November 22, 2024June 27, 2025 by raeatoussaint

A Quick Guide to Blockchain Technology for Beginners

How The Bitcoin Blockchain Works

raeatoussaint

bitcoin, blockchain, technology

The principles of The Blockchain

As mentioned in my post History of The Blockchain, there are the principles that when combined create a blockchain. Public key cryptography, distributed network with a shared a, an incentive to service transactions, record-keeping, and security.

We can transact on a blockchain due to public key cryptography and the financial context of blockchain that use tokens. The first step is creating a transaction message in a wallet and sending it to the blockchain. We can create messages in a wallet by way of specifying how much we would like to spend. We enter the public key of the recipient to send our message and use a private key to sign the message and verify that we have the secret knowledge to send that message. Afterwards the transaction message is broadcasted to other computers on the blockchain. There is no way to reverse a bitcoin transaction.

Steps on How to Use the Blockchain

Open a wallet app.
Then create a new message specifying the amount of bitcoin to send, as well as the recipient’s address.
We are able to use our private key to “sign” the message.
After double-checking the message contents, we can broadcast the message to the network of computers running the full bitcoin blockchain.
The network then verifies that our message represents a valid transaction (specifically, it is checking to see if we have the amount of bitcoin we claim as well as we were the ones with access).
The the miners race to record new transactions into a block and guess the proof of work problem (specifically, to find a nonce that produces a block hash with the correct number of leading zeros).
A miner who finds a solution shares its proof of work with the other miners in the network. The other miners accept the block by beginning to work on the next block (which has to include the hash of the newly made block).
The winning miner receives a set quantity of new bitcoins as a reward.
After 10 minutes, you and the seller each receive confirmation that the transaction went through. You receive your goods/services from the seller. Done deal!

How Does Bitcoin Work?

The Bitcoin blockchain is structured as a peer-to-peer communications protocol secured by a network of computers that record transactions on a public ledger into a block of data. The ledger is updated when another block is linked to the previous block by nodes of computers. Some of the computers that make up this network are verifying transactions while others are participating in securing the chain through a process called mining.

Proof-of-Work Mining

Blocks are represented by hashes which are like fingerprints. These hashes reference data from a particular block. In other words, a hash will always be a certain set of characters no matter how much data is added to it. Data from a block can include a nonce (which I will describe later), transaction, the hash of the previous and current block. Each block points backward to the one before it by referencing the previous hash. Valid blocks in the chain act as a timestamp showing the state of the network at a particular time.

The software of the bitcoin protocol attaches a hash to a random number called nonce. This hash is a complex number with a certain number of zeros in front of it. Mining nodes try to guess the random number by generating random numbers. The node that generates the correct number first is awarded the next block and tokens from the protocol.

Think of hash rate as the total processing power needed to win the lottery and find the number to verify the next block. The higher the hash rate the more difficult it is for the Miners to find the nonce. Once the nonce is discovered miners share their Proof-of-Work record it took to find the nonce. This is recorded on the block. Proof-of-work is the breakthrough in distributed computing. It is very important because it is a way that allows a network to reach consensus.