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Bitcoin is not a currency, and it not crypto anything. It is an amazing scheme concocted by computer geeks for extracting money from gullible people.

It is nothing but saved electrons.

“Mining” is a metaphor for running some computer code that produces a new number which is then declared to be worth something. It is worth nothing until it is converted to money. The quoted price is the last recorded selling price. It is not an indication of worth. Worth does not exist until a sell transaction is executed.

If you buy bitcoins, it is speculation. You could lose all your electrons. Your electrons are not insured by the federal government.

"Mining" is a metaphor for running some computer code that produces a new number which is then declared to be worth something. It is worth nothing until it is converted to money. The quoted price is the last recorded selling price. It is not an indication of worth. Worth does not exist until a sell transaction is executed.

Here's how it actually works. The miners test SHA256 hashes at 17 million trillion hashes per second. The miner achieving a non-random result, which is of course extremely unlikely, gets all the new bitcoin reward plus all the transaction fees for that roughly 8 minute period. The fees come from existing coin. The reward is brand new money from thin air, currently 12.5 bitcoins. The transactions fees paid to the lucky winner vary depending on the load on the network, but were currently about 4 bitcoins for a block (ranged from just over 1 to just less than 10 in December).

All rewards and fees are in the chain, and belong to the winner. The winner is always (statistically) going to be a pool, so the then the winnings are split among the pool members based on the work they did.

Your one correct statement: "Worth does not exist until a sell transaction is executed." May also be untrue if the sale is for a private key (e.g. a paper wallet). But generally true. Bitcoin is only worth something if a "gullible person" (your incorrect characterization) pays real money to receive a transaction at an exchange. But coin-to-coin prices are somewhat independent of that "real world" value, and that is the main reason why this bubble is just starting.

As for just electrons, sort of. A private key on the piece of paper is not electrons, but the transactions made to the corresponding address are stored on disk. So those are electrons or magnetic particles in most cases.