Cryptocurrency is a completely digital, decentralized form of currency. It can be used as a means of payment or exchange (though that's not a very practical use today), or as a potential store of value. Since it's a digital currency, you can't carry Bitcoins around physically in bill or coin form; all transactions take place online. Cryptocurrency is also decentralized, meaning it's not backed by government authority the way the U.S. dollar, for example, is. Instead, it's maintained by its users.

Cryptocurrency creators can set certain parameters when they make a new crypto such as how much there will be or rules around buying and selling and those typically cannot be changed. But because cryptocurrencies are decentralized, control of day-to-day operations is distributed among users, and any changes require majority approval from these users known as nodes.

The original intention behind Bitcoin, the first cryptocurrency, was to create an electronic cash system people could use in daily transactions. You technically can buy and sell things with it, but Bitcoin's price fluctuates quickly, which makes it a poor fit for spending instead of cash. You could spend $50 worth of Bitcoin on something today that ends up being worth $20 tomorrow. It's also not widely accepted as a form of payment yet, so you'll have very limited purchasing power.

In plain and simple language, staking is a form of investing in cryptocurrency. When someone buys cryptocurrency on a regular exchange, they are not investing in cryptocurrency in the same way that stakers are. This is because those who stake cryptocurrency serve a key function in maintaining and securing the integrity of the crypto sphere.

If it weren't for miners continuously adding Ether into the community for people to utilize, verifying blocks diligently, and preventing fraudulent activity, the network would quickly die out and become unusable. So, while miners do work for financial reward, they also desire to help maintain and grow the Ethereum platform.

Cryptocurrency mining has not been around for very long as it was only about 10 years ago that Bitcoin was first mined. Since that time, however, there has been a massive increase in interest and investment in crypto mining as more and more people understand how it works.