I have a mining question

[cinque8]

Hello,

I am very new to cryptocurrency.
I was wondering, who or what determines when new coins are mined, and how many?

Thank you

[nc50lc]

-snip-
I was wondering, who or what determines when new coins are mined, and how many?

Everything is in the software's code.
There's no "who", just the miners who compete for the winning blocks.
"when" is completely 'average', there's an ever-adjusting 'difficulty' that ensures that blocks can be mined in an average of 10minutes.
Each block's reward is currently 6.25BTC (+fees) which was 50BTC when Bitcoin was just released because it halves in every 210,000 blocks.

Pretty much everything covered in this 'the Bitcoin Wiki' article: en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Mining

[NeuroticFish]

There's no "who", just the miners who compete for the winning blocks.

This may need explained better: all the competing miners will get work to do. That work's difficulty is made in a way to ensure the next lock will come at about 10 minutes after the previous.
While all work basically the same, the first miner that manages to finish that job will get the "jackpot", meaning the block reward and tx fees.
It may also worth mentioning that the miners we talk about are the solo miners and the pools. For all those participating to a pool the reward is split if the pool has mined a block.

[cinque8]

Thank you for the great information Guys!