They’re all over the news. These so called crypto-currencies have been in everyone’s words for the last couple of months. Hearing terms such as Bitcoin or Ethereum on the words of people who claim to make huge amounts of money out of exchanging through these currencies, it has grazed the attention of anyone who uses internet regularly at least once; while others warn of how risky and unstable these kind of markets can be.
A crypto currency is basically a digital asset or token used as a medium of exchange through secured transactions and protected from the creation of additional units, all of these done through cryptography.
Once these cryptocurrencies acquire any type of value, that’s where people start to make a profit out of the rollercoaster-like behavior of it. By taking advantage of the price changes and dealing with these currencies in huge quantities, some people have got to make millionaire amounts of profit, the same way others have an entirely opposite streak of luck.
As of the past weekend, rumors were spread in the 4chan.com internet forum that Ethereum’s creator, VitalikButerin, had passed away. This caused a drastic fall down of the Ethereum coin’s value by 18%, by taking progressive falls of up to $0.10 USD in a matter of seconds. The news spread quickly and the Ethereum “miners” went outrage, since this matter represented thousands of dollars in loss for most of them.
Buterin himself rectified the facts via Twitter and published a picture of himself with information related to the latest ETH operation block, revealing through the Ethereum network that the whole thing was an orchestrated hoax.
It has been considered that these types of rumors are diffused as means to manipulate this new logistics of the crypto-actives market.
This event is also a reminder of what a volatile and unstable market we’re talking about. Several have made fortunes through crypto-currencies. However, any get-rich-quick story always comes with its respective load of risks.