Cryptocurrency- A Detailed Overview

Cryptocurrency has become the buzzword today and everyone is acquainted with the term very well.

But are you one of those who don’t have enough idea about cryptocurrency and want to learn more about it?

Then, you are at the right place. Here in this article, we will discuss all the necessary information about cryptocurrency from the basics that will resolve all your queries regarding this.

So let’s dive into this article and get all your questions answered.

What is cryptocurrency?

Cryptocurrency is basically the form of currency that exists virtually or digitally. It is a type of digital payment system that doesn’t rely on any bank for transactions. Instead, it requires a decentralization procedure for the transaction of records and to issuing of new records. 

It is organized and monitored by a peer-to-peer network named blockchain, which serves as a secure ledger of transactions.

The skyrocketing price of cryptocurrency has made it one of the most popular trading instruments. These are the limited extents that are used for cross-border transactions.

Do you know why it is named cryptocurrency? It gets its name as it uses encryption to verify transactions. That means advanced coding is being used for storing and transmitting cryptocurrency data. Encryption is provided for the sake of safety and security.

Cryptocurrencies can be mined or purchased from any cryptocurrency exchange. However, not all cryptocurrency sites allow purchasing.

The first cryptocurrency that was introduced was Bitcoin in the year 2009 and still remains the best. Besides Ethereum, Litecoin, Tezos, EOS, Zcash, and Monero are some popular cryptocurrencies.

Blockchain technology

As we discussed earlier that cryptocurrency is monitored and organized by blockchain technology, and you should have knowledge about it.

A blockchain is a distributed database that stores information electronically in a digital format, is shared among the nodes of a computer, and facilitates the process of recording transactions.

It is basically a digital ledger of transactions that is duplicated and distributed around the entire network of computer systems of the blockchain where each block contains a number of transactions.

Blockchains have a crucial role in the cryptocurrency system as they maintain a secure and decentralized record of the transaction. It guarantees the security and fidelity of a record of data and it generates trust without the interference of any trusted third party.

Blockchain is the foundation for immutable ledger and records transactions that can’t be deleted, altered, or destroyed and allows digital information to be recorded and distributed. That’s why this is otherwise known as Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT).

Blockchain technology can serve multiple sectors like supply chains and processes like crowdfunding and online voting. 

How does cryptocurrency help us?

The transaction cost is low to nothing when you make a transaction using cryptocurrency unlike the fee for transferring money from a digital wallet to a bank account. 

You can make transactions at any time of the day or night when you transact using cryptocurrency and there are no limits for purchases and withdrawals. Everyone is free to use cryptocurrency, unlike setting up a bank account, which requires documentation and other paperwork.

International cryptocurrency transactions are faster than wire transfers. Wire transfers take about half a day for the money to be transferred from one place to another. When you do transactions with cryptocurrency, it takes only a matter of minutes or even seconds.

Top 10 cryptocurrency list

It is always impossible to make a whole list of all the cryptocurrencies as there are around more than 18000 cryptocurrencies as of now which is impossible to bring in one list. 

Although there are a lot of cryptocurrencies that have no followers and are less used in the process of trading, some of them have immense popularity among traders and investors.

So let’s discover the top 10 cryptocurrencies.

Bitcoin

Bitcoin is the first decentralized digital currency which is also a type of digital asset which is used in public-key cryptography to record, sign and send transactions over the blockchain of Bitcoin.

Bitcoin was invented in 2008 by Satoshi Nakamoto and came into force in 2009 when its implementation was released as open-source software.

Bitcoins are invented as a reward for the process known as mining in those days which also can be exchanged for other currencies, products, and services. The current price of Bitcoin is 22,73,556 Indian rupees.

Bitcoin has always been criticized for its use in illegal transactions, the large amount of electricity used by mining, price volatility, and thefts from exchanges. However, Some economists and investors have also characterized it as a speculative bubble at various times.

Ethereum

Ethereum is a decentralized global software technology powered by blockchain which is popularly known for its cryptocurrency named ether.

Actually, it was designed as a token for use in the blockchain technology but, now this is heavily used as the pay for work by the participants in the blockchain technology.

Ethereum is programmable, secure, scalable, and decentralized. The current price of Ethereum is 1,52,975.80 Indian rupees.

Ethereum is actually invented by Vitalik Buterin in the year 2014. Other founders of Ethereum included Gavin Wood, Charles Hoskinson, Anthony Di Iorio, and Joseph Lubin. 

Litecoin

Litecoin is one of the cryptocurrencies that is created from a fork in 2011 in the Bitcoin blockchain.

One of the actual missions of Litecoin was to discourage enterprise-sized miners from gaining control of the mining process by using another encryption method. However, miners adopted their specialized machines immediately and begins to grow their mining capacity.

Litecoin was originally introduced by a Google engineer named Charlie Lee in the year 2011 who recommended Litecoin as the lite version of Bitcoin or a coin that is silver to the gold of Bitcoin.

Litecoin was released with 150 pre-mined coins and has done a total supply of 84 million coins in that time. The current price of Litecoin is 5393. 61 Indian rupees.

Cardano

Cardano is one of the biggest cryptocurrencies by market cap which is designed to be the next-generation evolution of the Ethereum idea which is a flexible, sustainable, and scalable platform for running smart contracts.

Cardano was introduced by the Ethereum co-founder Charles Hoskinson in September 2017.

Just like the blockchain native cryptocurrency of Ethereum is ETH, the blockchain’s native cryptocurrency of Cardano is ADA which can be bought or sold via exchanges.

These days, ADAs are used in-store value to send and receive payments, and for staking and paying transactions. The current price of  Cardano is 40.90 Indian rupees.

Polkadot (DOT)

Polkadot is a cryptocurrency and is also used as an open-source blockchain platform. It provides interoperability and interconnectivity between blockchains, by enabling the independent chains for the secure exchange of messages and performance of transactions with each other without the interference of any trusted third party.

This allows for the cross-chain transactions of assets or, between the different blockchains, and for cross-chain decentralized applications to be built using the Polkadot Network.

The protocol was introduced by one of the Ethereum co-founders Gavin Wood and raised its value to over $144.3 million in its initial coin offering in October 2017. The current value of Polkadot is around 792 Indian rupees.

Bitcoin cash

Bitcoin Cash is one of the cryptocurrencies, from the fork of Bitcoin that was created in August 2017. Bitcoin Cash increased the size of its blocks and allowed more and more transactions to be processed and improved scalability.

Bitcoin Cash is named as such because it uses the original Bitcoin Cash client. In November 2018, the cryptocurrency underwent another fork and split into Bitcoin Cash ABC and Bitcoin Cash SV (Satoshi Vision).

The current value of Bitcoin cash is around 14872.69 Indian rupees. Bitcoin Cash has promised a number of improvements over its predecessor, but it has yet to deliver on those promises.

Stellar

Stellar is one of the cryptocurrencies that is developed by the Stellar Development Foundation. In various cryptocurrency exchanges, this currency named lumen is traded under the name of XLM.

Stellar is one of the best-performing altcoins in the last five years with a market capitalization of over $1 billion.

The Stellar Foundation originally had over 100 billion lumens in existence but it burned roughly half of its outstanding coins in November 2019. Now there are around 22.5 billion coins in circulation and have a maximum supply of 50 billion.

The current price of Stellar is 11.31 rupees in Indian rupees.

Dogecoin

Dogecoin is also one of the cryptocurrencies that was introduced by Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer, who desired to create a payment system as a joke while making fun of the wild speculation in cryptocurrencies at the time. So It is referred to as the first meme coin and the first dog coin.

Dogecoin.com promotes this currency as a fun and friendly Internet currency referring to its origins as a joke with a market capitalization of over 85 billion dollars.

The price of dogecoin is rupees 6.58 in Indian currency.

Binance coin

Binance Coin is a type of cryptocurrency which is issued by the Binance exchange and trades with the BNB symbol. As of now, Binance Exchange is the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the world that has done more than 1.4 million transactions per second.

BNB was initially based on the Ethereum network, but it is now the native currency of its own blockchain of Binance.

The current price of a Binance coin is 24.091.02 in Indian currency.

Monero

Monero is a privacy-oriented, open-source cryptocurrency that was launched in the year 2014.

The blockchain of Monero is intentionally configured to be opaque that makes transaction details, like the identity of senders and recipients, and the amount of every transaction, anonymous by disguising the addresses used by participants.

The price of a Monero is 13,819.23 in Indian currency.

Cryptocurrency market (how different from the centralized market (standard money market/ currencies used in the world)

As we know that cryptocurrencies are a digital currency which is totally different from the standard money market.

Legality

Standard money or the currencies used in the world are the currencies that are generally issued by the government authorities and regulated by a central authority like a central bank whereas cryptocurrency is a digital or virtual currency that works as the medium of exchange and is not regulated by anyone. In fact, it uses cryptography technology to process.

There are different currencies used in different countries like dollars in the USA, and rupees in India but cryptocurrencies are the same everywhere.

Stability

Standard money is relatively stable, unlike cryptocurrencies which allow the government and regulators to navigate the economy against inflation and recession.

Tangibility

As cryptocurrencies are operated online like virtual coins, it is impossible to have the physical feel of these currencies. On the other hand, standard money has a physical aspect as it can exist as coins and notes.

Storage

As cryptocurrencies are virtual aspects and they exist online. That’s why they can be stored in digital wallets commonly known as cryptocurrency wallets. On the other hand, standard currencies can be stored in various forms like Paypal, banks, etc.

Supply

The major difference between standard money and cryptocurrency is supply. Standard money has an unlimited supply which means central authorities have no capital to the extent but most cryptocurrencies have capital when it comes to supply.

Exchange aspects

The medium of exchange of cryptocurrency is purely digital as it exists in digital form, created by computers, and operated as private pieces of code whereas standard money exists in both physical and digital form.

Cryptocurrency mining

Cryptocurrency mining refers to the process of verifying transactions on a digital ledger for a blockchain using extensive computer power. In simple terms, it is the process of creating new currencies while validating existing transactions.

This process generates Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies and it involves new transactions.

The mining of cryptocurrency has two goals that are to generate new cryptocurrency and to verify the authenticity of existing cryptocurrency transactions on the blockchain. Thus the mining reduces the fraudsters and increases user confidence in the coin.

Just like standard currencies, when one member spends cryptocurrency, the digital ledger debits one account and credits another account. The problem with cryptocurrencies is that they can be easily manipulated.

So cryptocurrency only allows verified miners to update transactions. It gives extra responsibility of securing the networking from double-spending. 

To ensure that only verified crypto miners can mine and do transactions, a proof of work consensus protocol is used in the place that secures the network from external attacks.

Best cryptocurrency to invest

Beginners have always found it difficult to invest in cryptocurrencies. But everyone has gone through this phase. It’s always confusing when it comes to investing in cryptocurrency.

So we have listed some of the cryptocurrencies that will be best to invest in. 

Bitcoin

Bitcoin is the best and most undervalued cryptocurrency to invest in because this leading crypto is a little less volatile. Bitcoin is expected to value at more than 75,000 dollars by the end of this session. 

Another benefit of buying this crypto is you can buy it as a fraction. So it is an ideal option for those who want to invest in Bitcoin without spending a lot.

Ethereum

If you want for investment without any potential risk, Ethereum is the best cryptocurrency to invest in. It bears some potential to outrun all the cryptocurrencies in the coming days.

Ethereum has seen a great hike in the past few years and analysts say that it will go in an upward trend in long run.

Apecoin

Another top cryptocurrency to invest in now is ApeCoin which offers some of the best altcoins to buy, which is based on the Ethereum blockchain.

This crypto can also be used for online purchases. Thus it allows the users to access different products from eBay, HomeDepot, Amazon, Walmart, and more by the payments of cryptocurrencies. That’s why it’s worth investing in it now.

Some other cryptocurrencies to invest in include uni swap, Binance coin, Solana, dogecoin, Cardano, Terra, Tether, Polkadot, Litecoin, Avalanche, etc. 

Last word

As you read this far, you might understand what cryptocurrency is about and I hope this article might resolve all your queries regarding it.

Cryptocurrency is a good and hot topic in the global financial system. It is an impressive technical achievement however, it remains a monetary experiment.

Cryptocurrency has not remained a hidden topic as it was in the past days. It has already grabbed the attention and it will get successful when more people will understand what it is about 

Common Faq’s

What is cryptocurrency?

Cryptocurrency is a decentralized system and digital asset that allows secure online payment.

What is the most popular cryptocurrency?

Some of the popular cryptocurrency includes Bitcoin, Ethereum, Binance coin, dogecoin, Solana, Cardano, etc.

Is cryptocurrency secure?

Yes, cryptocurrencies are secure as it’s backed by blockchain technology.

Is cryptocurrency safe to invest in?

Yes, cryptocurrency is safe to invest in when you make sure to trade and hold your crypto on a platform that offers good security measures that include two-factor authentication for users and a significant amount of holding.

Is crypto real money?

No, crypto is not real money. They are digital assets that people used for investment and online purposes 

*image source from Google

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