What Bitcoin mining is and how the pieces fit: proof of work, hashrate, the difficulty adjustment, block rewards and the halving schedule that shrinks them.
Mining is the process of competing to add the next block to a blockchain by finding a hash below a target, in exchange for newly issued coins and transaction fees. The competition is deliberately expensive, and that expense is what makes the ledger difficult to rewrite.
5 min read · reviewed
Proof of work makes producing a block expensive and verifying one nearly free. That asymmetry is the whole mechanism: it lets a network of strangers agree on one history without anyone deciding who is allowed to participate.
5 min read · reviewed
A cohort of listed companies runs a large share of Bitcoin's hashrate, and through 2026 several of them have been converting that capacity to AI and high-performance computing. Reported hashrate figures differ substantially between sources, so the ranking is directional rather than precise.
5 min read · reviewed
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