You've heard these terms but what do they mean?

Being new around here, there are some terms that I've heard but had no idea what they actually meant. I did some research and would like to briefly describe what I learned about these terms to help those of you that are in the same boat I was.

Bitcoin is an electronic cash system that has no central authority. Regular banks have a central server that has the record for all transactions. With bitcoin, this central server does not exist. It is a peer-to-peer system where ever peer has this record of all transactions that is automatically downloaded.

A block is a validated transaction that has transaction details and a link to the block that was validated just before the current one. This is a continuous record of all bitcoin transactions EVER executed, also known as the block chain.

Once a transaction is validated, it is permanent. It cannot be changed or forged. To do so, every single block would also need to be changed.

Bitcoin Miners are computers that validate transactions by solving a series of specialized math equations and add them to the block chain. When a transaction is requested, it is broadcasted over the entire network. Whoever solves these equations the fastest and validate the transaction are rewarded. Currently the reward is 12.5 but coins per validated block. As you can imagine, hundreds of thousands of computers are competing against each other to complete these validations.

While this is a very brief description, I hope I has shed some light for you. If this is not accurate or there is something that should be added, please make a comment.

Thanks for reading.

Sources:
Bitcoin
Block chain
Mining
Image
#minnowsupportproject