Not knowing enough about the founding of bitcoin, does anyone know what the 21 million computations to earn a single bitcoin each consist of? Is bitcoin actually a large project that required the computing power of several supercomputers to complete? If so, what is the project, and what problem(s) does it solve?
It cannot be solved instantaneously. The whole system is rigged in such a way that even if we start adding more computers to the network the difficulty will increase accordingly. With this system the amount of bitcoin becoming available on the market with each moment in time is set in stone
There will only ever be 21 million bitcoin. Mining has to do with solving the Bitcoin consensus / proof of work algorithm which earns the miner a bitcoin reward. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin#Mining
Right, but are all the algorithms the same?
How Bitcoin Works in 5 Minutes ;)