What is Crypto Mining?
Discover how mining works, the role of the halving, the evolution of mining hardware, and the structure of mining pools that secure Bitcoin today.
17 min · intermediate · part of Crypto Mining & Validation
What you'll learn
- What Mining Actually Is
- How a Block Gets Mined
- The Halving and Bitcoin's Issuance Schedule
- Mining Hardware: From Laptops to ASICs
- Mining Pools: Why Solo Mining Is Effectively Dead
- Mining Scams and What to Avoid
- For Deeper Reading
Key terms
- Mining
- The process by which Bitcoin miners use computational power to validate transactions, order them into blocks, and earn newly created BTC plus transaction fees as a reward.
- SHA-256
- The cryptographic hash function used by Bitcoin proof-of-work. Miners repeatedly hash block headers with varying nonces, searching for a hash below the network target.
- Nonce
- A 32-bit number in the Bitcoin block header that miners vary while searching for a valid hash. Most blocks require trillions of nonce trials before a valid one is found.
- Block subsidy
- The fresh BTC created and paid to the miner of each block. Currently 3.125 BTC after the April 2024 halving; halves approximately every four years.
- Halving
- The event, every 210,000 blocks (~4 years), at which the Bitcoin block subsidy is cut in half. Most recent: April 19/20, 2024 (50 → 25 → 12.5 → 6.25 → 3.125 BTC).
- Difficulty adjustment
- The algorithmic recalibration of the mining target every 2,016 blocks to maintain ~10-minute average block intervals. Bitcoin's difficulty was ~144.4 trillion in February 2026.
- Hashrate
- The total computational power of a miner or the entire network, measured in hashes per second. Bitcoin network hashrate ~915-927 EH/s in May 2026, with a peak of ~1.1 ZH/s in October 2025.
- ASIC (Application-Specific Integrated Circuit)
- Specialized chips designed solely for cryptocurrency mining. Modern Bitcoin ASICs (Antminer S21 Pro, WhatsMiner M60/M63) achieve 15 J/TH or better efficiency.
- Mining pool
- A coordinated group of miners who share computational work and split rewards. Foundry USA (~30.86%), AntPool (~15.78%), and SpiderPool (~11.60%) lead the May 2026 landscape.
- Block reward
- The total revenue a miner earns for finding a block — block subsidy plus transaction fees. As the subsidy declines through halvings, fees grow as a share of total reward.
- Stock-to-flow
- The ratio of existing supply to annual new issuance. Each Bitcoin halving doubles this ratio. After the 2024 halving, Bitcoin's stock-to-flow exceeds gold's on most measures.
- EH/s, ZH/s
- Exahashes (10^18) and zettahashes (10^21) per second — the units used to describe the staggering computational scale of modern Bitcoin mining.
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Open lessonEducational only — not financial advice.