Mining

How it is used

Common in news, energy debates and the hardware industry: Bitcoin mining, mining rig, mining farm, mining pool, mining difficulty. The verb is mine (mine a block, mine bitcoin). It does not apply to proof-of-stake networks, where people talk about staking and validating.

Example sentences

1. Bitcoin mining uses a lot of electricity, so many farms are built near cheap power sources.

2. After the Merge, mining ether was no longer possible.

Common collocations

• Bitcoin mining
• mining rig
• mining pool
• mining difficulty
• mining farm

Related terms

• minerA person, company or computer that takes part in mining on a proof-of-work blockchain, using hardware and electricity to compete for the right to add new blocks.
• proof of workA consensus mechanism in which miners use computing power to solve a puzzle before they can add a block. It makes attacks very expensive but uses a lot of energy. Bitcoin uses it.
• hash rateThe total computing power that miners use to secure a proof-of-work network, measured in hashes per second. A higher hash rate makes the network harder to attack.
• block rewardThe new coins a miner or validator receives for adding a block to the chain. On many networks, the transaction fees in that block are paid on top of the reward.
• halvingA built-in event in Bitcoin's code that cuts the block reward for miners in half every 210,000 blocks, roughly every four years, slowing down the creation of new coins.

More terms: Consensus, Mining & Staking

• consensus mechanism
• proof of stake
• validator
• staking