Saw [this tweet](https://twitter.com/michaelmcchill/status/1246888404123598848?s=21) about cooking mama and something about it being a crypto-miner and I have absolutely 0 clue what it means. Help?
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If you want bitcoins or any cryptocurrencies you can do it with 3 ways. You can buy some, earn it like you would any money by exchanging goods or services, or you can “mine” it. To mine it, you need a computer to solve a a very complex algorithm to create more money. This is by design in order to control the quantity of new money in circulation, and thus its inflation. If too many people create too many bitcoins too fast then this money lose its value so in order to have new money you have to work for it. So the algorithm in place must be decrypted by a computer and it has diminishing returns: the more people mine it, the harder it gets to have more. So you need many more computers to work longer and/or be more powerful (have more CPUs) and it costs money to buy those computers and it costs money to keep them turned on, sucking on electricity just to stay on to work to mine that algorithm.
Or you can make someone else’s work for it.
That’s what’s a cryptominer is. It’s basically a virus you install on your computer without knowing about it but instead of breaking it or sending personal information it start working in the background. It mines money and send it away. You might notice that your machine becomes more sluggish or you might not notice anyway. Basically someone else is becoming richer thanks to you.
Cryptocurrencies, which is a topic of its own, often generate new “coins” by doing some heavy math. A cryptominer is a program that will do that math.
If the cryptominer runs on your computer, you will pay for the electricity and experience the heat, noise and slowdown, but someone else will get the coins generated.
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