Help! So, I am all for cryptocurrencies and their potential, but I still have a bit of trouble with about the decentralization aspect of it. Central banks control the money flow, registered banks charge fees for processing and loaning that money. We want to get rid of that, so crypto was created. But now, we have (essentially) a central organization monitoring the creation and release of their own cryptocurrency units and subunits - I still support it as I think it's vital to ensure it maintains its value through control of inflationary or deflationary factors. What I don't get is mining. The mining of crypto is what decentralizes it so that bankers don't charge us transactions fees. Yet, from what I've gathered, mining is expensive, and the only way to benefit from doing it is to invest a crap ton of money into hardware, and then paying for energy consumption since these super-processors suck up energy. Leaving most of the mining up to people (businesses) focused on mining operations full-time. Is that not unlike banks?

I would still like to know about the process. I feel I have either oversimplified, overcomplicated, or completely misunderstood the decentralization aspect of crypto. Again, love crypto, I just want to understand what makes it different, as a currency, from fiat. I also understand that crypto has potential beyond currency.