I'm curious about how coinbase rewards work. Could someone clarify the mechanism for me?
I presume you refer to the
coinbase transaction. There is no "coinbase reward". There is the
block reward, which is consisted of the
block subsidy and the transaction fees.
The coinbase transaction is the transaction in which the miner pays themselves to claim the block reward. This includes the block subsidy (issuance of new money in circulation) and the transaction fees. In the most recent block,
837521, you can notice that the first transaction is the coinbase, constructed by the miner,
paying the miner 6.43321587 BTC.
This means that the miner created 6.25 new bitcoin, sent them to themselves, and claimed a total of 0.183 bitcoin from transaction fees.