I'm mining Ethereum, but what am I doing?

Question

I'm just stumbling for learning and hobby in some Ethereum mining and went on a site that explained me what to do. And it looks I'm really mining in 20 minutes it was setup, but I have no idea how much I have done or where I can see this.

I have a Private key from Geth but that doesn't look like a wallet key I can use. I have a Ethereum wallet for Ethereum's, I have bought for some time ago, they don't look alike. I like to put my successful mined coins(cents) to be transferred to my wallet new or owned JAXX wallet.

I'm using what the website told me. Geth and Ethminer my OS is windows 10 and my cpu is AMD 1600X, gpu Gigabyte 1080 GTX.

Answer 1

The miner is using your GPU to guess and check a hash that matches the correct one for the current block. If your miner is the first one to get it correct, then you get the mining reward. It is called proof of work. More details here.