user15314: I understand that a miner has a list of bitcoin transactions since the last time a a block was discovered. The first entry is the reward for who discovered the previous block. As more transactions gets added, they're appended to this list. This part is speculation, but I think there's also a nonce that the miners inject in order to produce a hash output that meets the difficulty.
Where can I find out the specifics about what exactly is hashed? I'm looking to understand the exact bytes and structure. 

user5757: The data that's hashed is the block header. You can find a description of the format and layout at https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Block_hashing_algorithm

15314: <p>I understand that a miner has a list of bitcoin transactions since the last time a a block was discovered. The first entry is the reward for who discovered the previous block. As more transactions gets added, they're appended to this list. This part is speculation, but I think there's also a nonce that the miners inject in order to produce a hash output that meets the difficulty.</p>

<p>Where can I find out the specifics about what exactly is hashed? I'm looking to understand the exact bytes and structure. </p>
 5757: <p>The data that's hashed is the <em>block header</em>. You can find a description of the format and layout at <a href="https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Block_hashing_algorithm" rel="nofollow">https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Block_hashing_algorithm</a></p>
