There is a whole emerging industry dedicated to mining cryptocurrency. Why is that, what is crypto mining, and how do you mine are all good questions to ask when relating to mining cryptocurrency.
Blockchain is the foundation for cryptocurrencies such as Etherium and Bitcoin. A blockchain is a system for recording transactions on the network. Miners are in charge of adding to and verifying transactions for new blocks.
The simplest way to start mining cryptocurrency is to install the NiceHash miner on your computer and run it. The NiceHash miner will automatically pick the most profitable algorithm for your hardware and start the mining process.
There are two common types of crypto mining rigs. The first is called an ASIC, which stands for Application-Specific Integrated Circuit. Then there are GPU miners, which use the graphics card on a standard PC to mine.
Mining cryptocurrency is not banned or illegal in most countries, including the USA. However, there are countries where it has been made illegal, most notably in China.
Cryptocurrency is increasingly mined in pools. These pools operate very similarly to lottery pools. A group of miners puts all their computational power together and agrees that they will split the proceeds if they receive the reward on a block.