With paper money, a government decides when to print and distribute money. Bitcoin doesn’t have a central government.
With Bitcoin, miners use special software to solve math problems and are issued a certain number of bitcoins in exchange. This provides a smart way to issue the currency and also creates an incentive for more people to mine.
Bitcoin miners help keep the Bitcoin network secure by approving transaction.
Mining is an important and integral part of Bitcoin that ensures fairness while keeping the Bitcoin network stable, safe and secure.
Mining is the process of running SHA256 double round hash verification processes in order to validate transactions and provide the requisite security for the public ledger of the bitcoin network. The speed at which you mine is measured in hashes per second.
The bitcoin network compensates miners for their effort by releasing bitcoin to those who contribute the needed computational power. This comes in the form of both newly issued coin and from the transaction fees included in the transactions you validate when mining. The more computing power you contribute, the greater your share of the reward.
In the early days of bitcoin, it was possible to mine with your computer CPU or high speed video processor card (GPU). Today that’s no longer possible. Devices based on custom ASIC chips who’s performance offers up to 100x the capability of older systems have come to dominate the industry. Mining with anything less will consume more in electricity than you’re likely to earn. It’s essential to mine with purpose built bitcoin mining hardware.