Mining cryptocurrency has its similarities and differences with mining for gold. It might be the new age equivalent of being a gold miner, but a crypto mine looks much different than a gold mine.
Blockchain is the foundation for cryptocurrencies such as Etherium and Bitcoin. A blockchain is a system for recording transactions on the network. Miners are in charge of adding to and verifying transactions for new blocks.
Mining cryptocurrency is not banned or illegal in most countries, including the USA. However, there are countries where it has been made illegal, most notably in China.
Cryptocurrency is increasingly mined in pools. These pools operate very similarly to lottery pools. A group of miners puts all their computational power together and agrees that they will split the proceeds if they receive the reward on a block.
Strictly speaking, mining cryptocurrency is not passive income because it requires you to maintain the hardware and make sure the machine is actively mining at optimum levels.
A wallet is software or hardware that holds a private and public key to access your cryptocurrency. This cryptocurrency is stored on the ledger of the blockchain network.