Mining creates new bitcoins and verifies transactions. It is Bitcoin’s proof-of-work process for adding blocks to the public blockchain.
Miners gather pending transactions into a proposed block and repeatedly calculate cryptographic hashes while changing a value called a nonce. The goal is to find a hash below the network’s difficulty target. Finding one requires substantial computational work, but other computers can check the result quickly.
When a valid block is accepted, its transactions become part of Bitcoin’s chain of records. The successful miner may receive a block subsidy, which creates new bitcoins, plus transaction fees. The subsidy is not unlimited: it began at 50 BTC per block and is periodically halved.
Mining is often described too simply as “solving math problems.” Miners are actually searching for a valid hash through repeated trial and error, while the network uses the resulting proof of work to coordinate agreement without a central administrator. “Staking” is a different consensus method used by some other cryptocurrencies, not Bitcoin’s native mechanism.
Bitcoin’s difficulty adjusts every 2,016 blocks, roughly every two weeks, helping keep the average interval between blocks near 10 minutes despite changes in total computing power.