Creeper
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I have been mining various crypto coins for 6 or 7 years. Basically, some coins, but not all, allow "mining", which is essentially using some kind of computing device (CPU or GPU or specialized hardware called ASICs) to calculate an acceptable cryptographic hash for each transaction on the network. Miners are basically verifying that every transaction is legitimate and that no one is copying digital coins and trying to spend them twice. The design of the coin determines how difficult it is to calculate the hashes. Different coins use different hashing algorithms although some use the same. Every time a miner calculates the correct hash he is rewarded with a block of coins. Again, the amount of coins is different for each currency. Usually the reward is decreased over time making the coins more scarce. This feature was designed into Bitcoins to slow inflation and keep the value of the coins more stable.
There is downloadable mining software miners use to calculate hashes. You can run it on any PC and use the CPU or GPU to "mine" for crypto coins. There are a few freeware miners, or miners that do not charge a fee to use, but most charge a fee now, by allocating a certain amount of mining time and rewards, to the owner of the software. The software has made the process of mining pretty easy and almost anyone can do it with a little knowledge and some light reading. Some coins have point and click mining.
While you can mine with a single CPU or GPU, most coins require a bit more hardware than that. People build mining rigs with as many as 6 GPUs installed and the mining software will recognize all of them and allocate all of their GPUs to mining. Obviously, the more GPUs you use, the more hashes you can calculate which means the probability of finding the correct hash first increases. It is a little more complicated than this but this is basically the gist of it.
Obviously there is a cost to mining - electricity. Bitcoin has become so difficult to mine that only big energy consuming rigs can calculate the hashes correctly. Most bitcoins are mined in big data centers that are using enormous amounts of energy. This is what Elon Musk is complaining about. If you have access to your own solar power, the cost of mining is only the capital investment in equipment and solar panels. Once depreciated, mining is free! But most people use electricity from the electric companies.
By the way, there are hundreds and hundreds of different coins. Some were designed to allow GPU mining with less difficulty to keep ordinary people interested in mining. I only mine coins that are "profitable" for my rigs. Usually I convert those coins to Bitcoin or some other currency that is more stable than the one I am mining. When the difficulty increases to the point where I cannot earn enough coins to pay for the electricity, I move on to another coin. So far there has always been another coin for me to mine. Someday that might not be the case at which time I will shut down my operation and attempt to sell my rigs for parts.
I hope this was helpful.
