What Does Bitcoin Mining Mean?
Bitcoin mining is the process of creating, or rather discovering, bitcoin currency. Unlike real-world money that is printed when more is needed, bitcoin cannot simply be willed into existence, but has to be mined through mathematical processes. Bitcoin maintains a public ledger that contains past transactions, and mining is the process of adding new transactions to this ledger.
Techopedia Explains Bitcoin Mining
Bitcoin mining is essentially the acquisition and creation of bitcoins as a way to introduce more coins into the system, as rewards for doing computational work. The bitcoin network contains a public ledger of all transactions called the block chain, which serves to confirm all past transactions to the rest of the network that these were all legitimate, so that already spent coins have been transferred accordingly.