ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses mining basics, hash rate, required hardware, pooled mining, reward sharing, countries famous for mining and criticisms against the proof-of-work mining process. Cryptocurrency mining is the method of verifying transactions and adding the records to the distributed ledger for various forms of cryptocurrency. Each time a user makes a transaction a cryptocurrency miner is responsible for ensuring the authenticity of information and updating the blockchain with the transaction. The ability to generate it fast has a knock-on effect on the cryptocurrency mining and is considered the single most crucial element in the mining process. Cryptocurrency mining is competitive and requires powerful hardware to compete with other miners in the network. Profitability factors give the potential miners tentative information on how much they could earn by mining a particular cryptocurrency. Pooled mining has been a popular concept in cryptocurrency mining that helps to tackle the growing difficulties of the mining process.
