The bitcoin block reward is a particular rule for the bitcoin cryptocurrency. Bitcoin's developer, Satoshi Nakamoto, thought up the bitcoin reward as a way to control circulation. The bitcoin reward dictates what amount miners get for mining bitcoin.
Miners get bitcoin rewards by successfully mining a bitcoin block in the blockchain system. The miner claims the reward by adding it to the beginning of the block. At the time that bitcoin started, the bitcoin block reward was worth 50 bitcoin. Due to a principle of reward halving (in which the reward is halved every 210,000 blocks), the value has gone down since then, and will eventually reach zero.
Block rewards are the only way that new bitcoins can be created, and therefore, are essential to sustaining the bitcoin economy.
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