What is Cryptocurrency and why should you care about it,

If you haven’t been living under a rock for the past couple of months, you’d have heard of Bitcoin and its rapid growth in popularity as well as market cap. And I’m sure many of you might have wondered what is this bitcoin and why is it suddenly worth nearly 5,800$?

Well today I answer that question and give you a tiny glimpse into the world of cryptocurrency and what has fueled their sudden rise in popularity as well as valuation.

What Is Cryptocurrency?

To put it very simply, cryptography is a branch of computer science where we use complex key chains to help protect our privacy. Everything from a WiFi password to the login details of your social network is protected using cryptographic services.

When it comes to cryptocurrency, we use the same security policies to make sure that the online transactions of this digital asset is protected using cryptographic algorithms. As the astute among you may have already noticed, that is a level of security that even traditional institutions like banks offer us for online transactions in the modern day and age.

Well then how does Cryptocurrency different from other Currency 💱 

Three main points mainly and for the sake of brevity and the scope of this article we shall stick to a couple of lines about each main reason.

● In the creation of new units of cryptocurrency, a complex algorithm is solved that consumes large amount of electricity as well as computing power and the new unit is awarded to the person or group of people who have contributed to solving that particular instance of the algorithm. In simpler terms it is like solving a cipher and whoever gets to decode it first, gets the treasure!

● Cryptocurrency and it’s torchbearer Bitcoin is decentralised. What does that mean? When it comes to the currency we use, the country that prints the currency plays a major role in the valuation of it. Bitcoin does away with all of that, taking the power away from the central banks and putting it in the hands of people who have invested into the currency by the creation of the block chain- a virtual ledger book of sorts.

● Fiat currency or as we traditionally know it-’money’ is supposed to be backed by assets; each piece of paper money or even coins is supposed to be redeemable for a certain amount of gold. However, there is no concept of assets behind Cryptocurrency, it runs on the mutual acknowledgement of the fact that the resources spent mining them is worth a certain amount of money.

Now I know the last point may seem scary for many people and may turn them off bitcoin or other forms of cryptocurrency forever. But even fiat money isn’t as stable as it looks with countries being able to basically print money out of thin air in order to save themselves from bankruptcy and thus sending the international trade value of their currency plummeting down the gutter.

As a citizen using fiat money, none of us has any control over that. With cryptocurrency we take back that control, and there is just no way of simply printing money out of thin air, a definite procedure has to be followed before we can mine more cryptocurrencies.

When and if people become aware of the incredible monopoly of Federal Reserve Banks, there will be a huge influx of people moving over to cryptocurrency and when that time comes, the early adopters will have the most to gain.

This is why you should invest in cryptocurrency. Oh and if you are still not convinced, let me also tell you cryptocurrencies are incredibly safe with offline as well as online wallets for them being available and all transactions ever done with bitcoin is all logged into the blockchain so every bit of cryptocurrency is accounted for.

What are the popular Cryptocurrencies out there?

There are quite a few out there but the most important ones right now are Bitcoin and Ethereum. Bitcoin has a fairly established market and is accepted in many major countries as well as companies including giants like Microsoft, Newegg, Steam, Wordpress, Subway and a lot of others. So if you are looking to invest into Bitcoin, buying it from a trusted marketplace is better than trying to mine it as the hardware and electricity cost for it has gone through the roof.

Ethereum though is in it’s initial stage and while miners might want to get into it, the economy around Ethereum is still developing.

Other than that there are quite a few other alternates or alt coins as they’re popularly known in the cryptocurrency industry. Most notable among them are dogecoins and litecoins and if you seek to invest in any one of them or even Bitcoin and Ethereum, I’d suggest you’d do some more research into it. The future is here, the future is in cryptocurrency and I’d be lying if I said it isn’t uncertain and kind of scary!