In simple terms, mining is to use the chip to perform a calculation related to random numbers, and obtain the answer in exchange for a virtual currency. Virtual coins can be exchanged for the currencies of various countries in some way. The more powerful the chip, the faster it can find the random answer, and the more coins it can theoretically produce per unit of time. Because of the random number involved, only if the answer happens to be found can the reward be obtained.
Satoshi Nakamoto elaborates in his paper:
\"In the absence of a central authority, miners are encouraged to support the Bitcoin network and Bitcoin's currency circulation system has an initial source of money injection.\"
Nakamoto likened the creation of bitcoins by consuming CPU power and time to a gold mine consuming resources to inject gold into the economy. Bitcoin mining and node software is mainly through the peer-to-peer network, digital signature, interactive proof system to initiate zero-knowledge proof and verification transactions.
Each network node broadcasts transactions to the network, and these broadcast transactions are verified by miners (computers on the network), who can use their own proof of work results to express confirmation, and the confirmed transactions are packaged into blocks of data that are strung together to form a continuous chain of data blocks.
Satoshi himself designed the first version of the Bitcoin mining program, which was later developed into the widely used first generation of mining software Bitcoin, which was popular from 2009 to mid-2010.