In cryptocurrencies, what does mining mean?

I will try to explain mining in very simple terms:

Let’s suppose you (Located in US) and I (Located in India) have a bank account in say HDFC Bank. Hence, HDFC bank is the one (third-party) who maintains our account, balances i.e. our ledger.

Now, I send you 10,000 USD. HDFC Charges us - 2% for this transaction.

HDFC charges us this amount for the following services:

Maintaining our ledger i.e. database.

Providing us service to transfer money from one account to another.

Now, let’s move to cryptocurrencies. Crypto’s (like Bitcoin) are based on open-source blockchain technology with distributed database which means, their is no third party (like HDFC bank) who manages our ledger. The network is distributed.

The miners are the one who maintain the database of all transactions that happen on bitcoin network. Anyone who has downloaded the copy of all transactions can become a miner. I won’t go into mining pool and all, to keep things simple.

What these miners do? - The miners share their hash power or you could say run an algorithm to confirm/verify transactions that happen on Bitcoin network. For verifying any transaction, they get a fixed reward i.e. Bitcoins. This is how new bitcoins are generated.

I hope this answers your question. Drop a comment if you have any doubts.

Thanks