New User to Algorand - Stupid questions

Hello everyone, I am new to Algorand. I did you BTC several times but algos seem completely a different technologies.
Can anyone please help me understand a couple of things. I apologize in advance for my stupidity and ignorance. Here we go:

  1. Can I “mine” algos with my pc? Beside buying BTC and covert them to algos on an exchange, can I just mine them by solving some algorithms? like in Bitcoin?

  2. who regulates the quantity of Algos ? Is the number finite like in bitcoins or the developers can create more algo capital if needed?

Those are my main questions. Thank you for your patience.

Hi @fdrake, welcome to Algorand!

  1. You cannot “mine” Algos as you “mine” BTC. Algorand is a pure Proof-of-Stake protocol, which has many benefits over Proof-of-Work protocols like BTC: in particular it is much faster (less than 5s to confirm a transaction), has lower transaction fees (currently 0.001 Algo), support a much higher throughput (1,000 transactions per seconds), … See https://algorand.foundation/algorand-protocol/about-algorand-protocol/pure-proof-of-stake for more details. Note however, that if you hold Algos (on a non-custodial account), you automatically receive rewards: https://algorand.foundation/faq#participation-rewards-
  2. The total number of Algos is fixed to 10 Billion Algos. See https://algorand.foundation/the-algo/algo-dynamics for more details.
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