Although most talk and write about ``bitcoin mining``, bitcoin is not the only coin that can be mined. You can mine Ethereurm, Litecoin, Monero, Dash, Zcash and many others but those are the main ones in our opinion.

To mine crypto you would need to decide if you want to invest in hardware or pay a company that offers cloudmining services and not worry about hardware and electricity consumption.

As you begin to explore the possibilities of Bitcoin and consider plunging into the world of digital currency, one term that you will encounter is Bitcoin mining. The mining of bitcoins is central to the process of creating the digital currency and making it available for exchange.

While you do not need to understand Bitcoin mining in order to buy or spend the currency, mining is the method by which bitcoins can be obtained, or created, without exchanging cash. On the surface it's a technical process, and one that can be a little intimidating, but the basic principles behind bitcoin mining can be comprehended by the new user.

Beware of the cloud mining scams, most offer little to no evidence of owning any crypto mining hardware. Anyone can setup a website and make claims of having some huge mining facility. At first they may seem legit, by sending you monthly payments but you will not see a ROI. It is for that very reasons, we will only list the most reputable to date which is GENESIS MINING.

The first thing to wrap your mind around is Bitcoin's essential nature. As a form of digital currency it exists only in lines of computer code. This significant difference is what drives the way bitcoins are created. Unlike a physical form of currency which is printed onto a tangible piece of paper, bitcoins exist only in a digital sense. Nevertheless, in order to maintain a system of exchange, there still has to be a method of creating (printing) the currency and tracking how many bitcoins are in circulation. This process is accomplished by Bitcoin mining.

Mining is, by simple definition, a process of adding transactions to the public ledger of past Bitcoin transactions. The ledger of past Bitcoin transactions is known as the block chain, meaning it is a simple chain of blocks. The central purpose of the block chain is to confirm transactions that are taking place in the Bitcoin market.

Before the days of computerized transactions, banks needed to maintain ledgers of their customer's transactions and balances. This was the manner in which records were kept prior to the digital era. A ledger allowed the bank to know how much money you had in your account and it facilitated the transfer of that money to another entity. The block chain is very much like that type of ledger with a notable difference. It only exists in a digital sense. To further simplify this explanation, the block chain is the digital record of Bitcoin transactions. Bitcoin nodes use the block chain to separate legitimate transactions from fraudulent ones attempting to spend bitcoins that have already been spent.

Bitcoin mining exists to provide a means for Bitcoin nodes to reach a secure, tamper-resistant consensus. Mining also provides the means for the creation of new bitcoins. Miners are paid transaction fees, and they also receive a percentage of newly created bitcoins. This process, though it seems difficult to comprehend, is what maintains the decentralized nature of the currency. It also assists in motivating miners to provide security for the overall system.

The process is referred to as mining because it closely resembles the process of mining other commodities such as gold and silver. The process requires exertion—the expenditure of energy—and the bitcoins created from mining are created at a rate that resembles the rate at which commodities like gold are mined from the physical ground.

By its very nature, Bitcoin mining must present a certain level of difficulty. Mining is purposely designed to be resource-intensive and difficult to accomplish so that the number of blocks discovered by miners each day is kept steady. Too much mining would upset the balance of exchange. Just as the US Mint cannot simply thrust millions of new pieces of currency into the market each day, thereby devaluing the dollar, bitcoins cannot be created without some type of regulation that governs the speed at which they are made available.

The technical explanation is this: mining a block is very difficult because the SHA-256 hash of a block's header must be lower than or equal to a target in order for the block to be accepted by the Bitcoin network. Confused? Here's a somewhat simpler explanation. The hash of each block—remember, bitcoins are essentially lines of computer code and not physical currency—must start with a certain number of zeros. The probability of calculating a hash that begins with multiple zeros is very low. This means that many attempts must be made to mine the block.

Here at CryptoSwede it is not out intention to dig deep on the subject. We just want to give you a basic overview of how bitcoins are created and processed across the Bitcoin network. If you want to proceed further into the active mining of bitcoins, you need to explore some advanced explanations of bitcoin mining.

If you are new to bitcoin mining, you may find attempting it to be a difficult process that can tie up your computer resources. It is best to begin by investigating various mining websites which will allow you to participate in mining as a member of a larger group. We have reviews of many of these mining groups available on our website. In essence you need to do your own research, and not rely on information from one source.