Hi

Mining  is the process of record-keeping, done through the use of computer processing power.

In Bitcoin, transaction validation process is called mining. For each block of transactions validated, the successful miner receives bitcoin reward.

Mining is doing the work of finding nonce so that sha256(sha256(data+nonce)) < difficulty, where

1. Nonce is an integer number the miner chooses freely (this choosing of the nonce and checking if the condition (< difficulty) is met comprises the work
2. Data is a hash over the contents of the block (transactions) and the previous block's hash
3. SHA256() is the SHA-256 cryptographic hashing function
4. Difficulty is a value that is adjusted consensually by the nodes of the bitcoin network to adjust for change in network computation power in order to have one block every 10 minutes found by the network

Cost to mine one, based on average electricity rate:

South Korea  = $26,170
Germany         = $14,275
France              = $7,930
Japan               = $8,723
UK                      = $8,402
Brazil                = $6,741
South Africa  = $5,948
Estonia            = $5,551
US                      = $ 4,758
Russia              = $ 4,675
India                 = $ 3,274
Venezuela      = $ 531

Mining bitcoin is going to cost to much as the difficulty will keep on increasing. There is need to switch on other consensus protocols to overcome this drawback.

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