now with that background on cryptography you're set to understand blockchaining which basically takes the output of a cypher, and uses it to re-encode the next one, creating a chain. you still can't tamper with the new code without knowing the key, AND it's twice as hard to tamper with the previous link in the chain because there's two sets of MATH that you would have to power through to crack it

in this manner you can store data, like a money ledger safely and securely as long as you consistently have a network of workers adding more and more MATH on top of the chain. as long as the attacker doesn't have as much working power as you do adding more on top, he can't go backwards and undo your ledger entries and supply his own values

and that's pretty much the bare basics on what you need to know to get started in cryptocurrency!