it's not magic, it's just really boring and stupid if you explain it well.

it's just a decentralized authentication network built on cryptography algorithms. but i guess if you don't know what any of those words mean it seems mysterious. you need a baseline understanding of networking and cryptography, and well, very few people have that.

and people attribute financial value to each bitcoin (or whatever coin), which is just a piece of code you uniquely possess when it is in your 'wallet'.

I know there’s science somewhere in there

There is! It looks something like this...

😬

Okay I felt bad for everyone who was too lazy to search so here's how it works.

It's really not that interesting unless you're specifically into cryptography, and then it's like, kind of interesting for 20 minutes. I remember when "the blockchain" first came out people were talking about lots of potential uses (secure online voting was the only one that comes to mind) besides scamming people and selling illegal stuff, but of course none of those ever materialized.