Understanding Bitcoin isn't that difficult; a story about a small island can explain it:

There is a secluded island where 100 villagers live. Some grow corn, some fish, and others pick coconuts. They usually rely on barter to get by—"I’ll trade you 2 fish for 3 corns, I’ll trade 1 coconut for a sickle." But carrying items around for barter is too cumbersome, so they first thought of "keeping accounts": each of us privately keeps a small ledger, for example, I owe you 5 fish, you owe me 2 coconuts. But if the numbers don’t match, trouble arises.

Later, someone discovered that there were unique patterned stones in the island's volcano crater that no one could replicate. They agreed that "1 stone = 1 fish" and used stones as currency. Bartering became much easier, but as transactions increased, it became hard to keep track, so they pooled money to build a "trading station" and appointed two people to manage the ledger, making sure it wasn’t altered—this was the earliest form of a "bank."

However, trouble struck! One of the ledger keepers became greedy and secretly recorded 10 extra stones under their name, trading fake numbers for others' corn. Everyone panicked: if money could be altered at will, wasn’t all their hard work in vain? This is what is commonly referred to as inflation.

Then came the crucial turning point! A clever person suggested: let's not let a few people manage the ledger! Let’s give each of the 100 people a blank ledger, and from now on, whenever a trade occurs, the person must shout it out loud enough for everyone to hear, and then everyone writes down clearly in their own ledger, "Zhang San trades 2 stones for Li Si’s 5 fish." This way, everyone’s ledger is identical; even if someone loses their ledger, they can recover it by comparing with the majority. Want to alter the ledger? Unless you can convince 51 people to change it together—only the ledger recognized by more than half of the people counts, which is the "distributed ledger" of Bitcoin. The "51% attack" for cheating becomes nearly impossible.

But a new problem arose: shouting for every transaction is too cumbersome. Why help others keep accounts? Later, the internet arrived, and there was no need to shout! Everyone installed the same accounting software, and whenever someone made a trade, the software automatically sent a message to everyone, synchronizing their mobile ledgers. As for the motivation for keeping accounts, during each transaction, the payer would offer a small "reward"; whoever first correctly records the transaction (and aligns with everyone’s ledger) receives the reward—this "reward" is Bitcoin, and the process of keeping accounts is called "mining."