Definition of Cryptocurrency:
The word "Crypto" means it's secure & safe.
"Currency" means something that is used as a medium of exchange(money). Here it means purely digital form of money.
Therefore, A cryptocurrency is a digital money, meaning it's only spent online but can be converted to paper money & spent offline.
The word mining is used in digital currency creation while the word minting is used in physical or fiat or paper money printing.
The main difference between cryptocurrency and physical money is that only a fixed amount of cryptocurrency is produced by the entire system as a whole.
Unlike currencies as we know them today where government can simply choose to print unlimited amounts, cryptocurrency has to be mined by users using mining program that solves sophisticated algorithms in order to release blocks of coins that can go into circulation. This is part that makes cryptocurrency unique, as there is nobody who can simply press a button and get unlimited coins.
Cryptocurrencies have a limited amount of coins that can be mined and once they have all been mined, there will be no more of them being created as it is virtually impossible.
For instance, the 21million bitcoins that were mined will only be the coins that will be in circulation forever and no further bitcoins will be added to the system.
Do you remember
1 BITCOIN price was 1$ in 2009? Now it's value over 2500 Dollars per Bitcoin
If you purchased 100 BITCOIN at 2009 then you could have over 250,000 Dollars Now.
Did you miss this chance? No problem.
The same goes for other coins that are in circulation now..... E.g. Edinar coin or THE BILLION COIN (TBC) are the NEXT BITCOIN to invest in NOW!