What is a Coinbase in Bitcoin Mining?

A few levels down the Bitcoin and crypto rabbit-hole and fans have encountered the term 'mining’. 

It is a vital process that keeps the Bitcoin and Proof-of-Work networks reliable, allowing applications running on such platforms to be censorship-resistant with 100 percent uptime. 

Mining is run by miners—not with pickaxes and shovels. 

The act of mining is done by highly tuned computers packed with chipsets to solve complex mathematical problems. It is a race. 

The more the processing power, the more the rewards. 

Over time this has been more competitive with manufacturers rolling out more efficient miners—it is inevitable; Moore's Law defines this growth in sophistication.

But, did you know that mining rewards are technically known as 'coinbases'? Yes, not the cryptocurrency exchange.

Roughly every 10 minutes, Satoshi Nakamoto made the network confirm a batch of transactions. 

As aforementioned, a miner—often a mining pool—that channels the most computing power to solve a complex mathematical problem is rewarded with the 6.25 BTC as 'coinbases.'

Eventually, the Bitcoin network will dispense all of the 21 million BTC as total supply. 

Coinbases will decrease every after 210,000 blocks—or roughly four years—until the last block bearing the final coinbases is released in 2140.