The Hustle – “An illustrated guide to bitcoin mining, blockchains, and the “minting” process of cryptocurrency’s most popular coin. Bitcoin has had a banner start to the year. Less than 2 months after breaking the $20k barrier for the first time, the digital currency more than doubled in price, hitting a high of $49,344 this week. Every time bitcoin is proclaimed to be dead, it seems to surge back, buoyed by bullish investors, favorable legislation, and tech titans’ tweets. At this point, nearly everyone has heard of bitcoin. But many folks still don’t quite understand how the currency is created. It’s not printed like cash. It’s not a physical object like a gold bar. It’s not stored on a piece of plastic like a debit card. It just exists somewhere in a vast digital expanse until it’s excavated into circulation by a so-called bitcoin miner. In this illustrated guide, we’ll cover the following:

• How bitcoin is created (a process called mining)
• How the economics of mining have changed over time
• The effects this process has on power consumption…”