I get asked all the time “what exactly are cryptocurrencies”, why are they becoming so hard to ignore, is it legal, is it safe, how can I acquire them and so on. This guide intends to break the concept of cryptocurrencies to basic layman terms for easy comprehension without diluting the actual facts of the subject matter. “Crypto’s” as often referred to are digital currencies not under any jurisdiction or governmental power that is, they are completely independent of any central power. They are decentralized and untraceable a characteristic that gained the trust of its early users in the ‘’Dark net”. In technical terms they are simply limited entries in a database no one can change without fulfilling specific conditions, I know that doesn’t sound like much but it is what it is actually.
In the early 20’s a quest to introduce centralized digital currencies were carried out by many tech firms and institutes all to which proved to no avail, the major problem being there were looking at how money could be centrally controlled. To make this happen a payment method with accounts, transactions and balances are required but the major problem faced at that time was “Double spending” i.e. to prevent that one entity spends the same amount multiple times which was meant to be handled by a central server. The inability to make this feasible has led to various efforts of programmers to develop something new and better, not until 2008 when the anonymous “Satoshi Nakamoto” brought about bitcoins that the world knew a solution has finally surfaced. Bitcoin didn’t actually exist as a currency satoshi himself referred to it as “A pair-to-pair electronic cash system” with the major goal being to invent what people failed to invent since the digital cash conquest. This decision gave birth to the rise of cryptocurrencies. Since then we have seen the rise of different cryptocurrencies apart from bitcoins. They are mostly referred to as ‘altcoins’ of which includes ethereum, monero, ripple, litecoin, zcash, ethereum classic and the recent bitcoin cash (BCC) that came to be after the recent hard fork of the bitcoin blockchain.
Now the question is how all of a sudden did these little demons become so important that governments are starting to review their policies and look for ways to actually gain control over them. Well these last few months has seen a rise in the market value of cryptocurrencies with bitcoin hitting an all-time high of 1 BTC to $3,800. Wooow!! I know right that’s the feeling anyone who had earlier invested in buying bitcoins when it was next to nothing will have. This miracle “Digital Gold” has transformed the lives of many and believe me you have not seen the best of bitcoin, now not just bitcoins here, other altcoins too have experienced exponential growth with ethereum seeing growth as much as 2500%. If one thing, I’ll love you to pick from reading this it’s the fact these currencies are becoming too damn important for the world to ignore. I’ll refer to you to sites that actually measure and study the growth of bitcoins and other altcoins such as cryptocompare.com to get well informed on how you can actually invest in these and not be left out.