Since the early 2000s, we know various digital payment platforms, one of the most popular to date is Paypal. Basically, a digital payment platform like PayPal is an intermediary between two parties who will make transactions.
This intermediary acts as a trusted party by both parties to verify the transaction, then register and transfer the funds from the first to the second party.
This kind of PayPal digital payment platform is actually similar to interbank ATM transaction providers, such as ATM Bersama, Prima, Link, Cirrus, Alto or Maestro.
Blockchain and Cryptocurrency
Until the year 2009, a mysterious figure who uses the name Satoshi Nakamoto, launched a digital payment platform with the name 'Bitcoin'. There are at least two fundamental things that differentiate Bitcoin from traditional digital payment platforms like PayPal.
First, Paypal and the like are just intermediaries for electronic transactions using the common currency used everyday. As with any other international transaction, the currency standard generally accepted by the digital transaction platform is the US Dollar currency.
While Bitcoin is a 'currency' itself in digital form, which is outside the currency system that is recognized and regulated by the world's central bank. He has a fluctuating value. Currently the value of 1 Bitcoin is equivalent to USD 2,490. To have Bitcoin can be done in three ways: buy, get as payment, or do 'mining' or 'mining'.
Of course the mining here is not like we dredge the earth to mine gold. Mining to obtain Bitcoin is done by running a series of algorithms to solve a key used to verify a transaction.
Second, Bitcoin transactions do not require a third party like Paypal, ATM Bersama and other it. To replace third parties, Bitcoin transactions are verified and recorded in an encrypted distributed system to ensure their security. This distributed system is called 'Blockchain', which will be explained next.
Due to its open source nature, the Blockchain platform was eventually developed by many parties to bring up various cryptocurrencies besides Bitcoin. One of the biggest besides Bitcoin is Ethereum. Currently both cryptocurrencies have a market capitalization close to USD 70 billion.
