What are cryptocurrencies?

A crypto is a virtual or digital coin which is secured by cryptography, because of that, the falsification or more than one time spending become impossible. A lot of cryptocurrencies are decentralized networks based on the blockchain technology. An important factor of cryptocurrencies is the fact that they do not emerge from a central authority, which makes them impossible to be manipulated by a government. 

 Grasping Cryptocurrencies

Cryptos can be bought from cryptocurrency exchanges or they can be mined. Not all electronic commerce pages allow buying by using cryptocurrencies. Actually, cryptocurrencies, even those which are more well known, like Bitcoin, are not used for transactions that are in small quantities. The increasing value of cryptocurrencies has acknowledged them as market instruments. In a limited amount they are also used for international transactions.

Blockchain

In the center of cryptos functionality, is the blockchain technology. Just like its name suggests, blockchain is at its core a group of connected blocks on the internet. Every block contains a group of transactions than have been verified, all in an independent way from every member of the network. Every newly created block can be verified before it is confirmed, making the falsification of the history of transactions almost impossible. The substance of the online ledger has to be accepted by the whole network of a singular node. Experts say that blockchain technology could be of use to a lot of industries.

Different Cryptocurrencies

Bitcoin is the most known and most valuable crypto. An anonymous person called Satoshi Nakamoto invented it and presented it through a white paper on 2008. There are thousands of cryptos available on the market today. Every crypto pretends that has a different function. For example, Ethereum markets itself like a gas for the base intelligent contract. XRP of Ripple is used by banks to soothe international transactions. Bitcoin, which was made available on 2009 is still the most traded crypto. Since November 2021, there were over 18.8 million bitcoins in circulation, with a total capital of 1.2 trillion USD. Since Bitcoin's success there have been launched a lot other cryptocurrencies, known as ''altcoins''. A lot of them being just clones of Bitcoin, while other are new coins created from the beginning. They include EOS, Litecoin, Solana, Ethereum. By November 2021, the total value of all the existing cryptocurrencies has reached over 2.1 trillion USD, Bitcoin represents 41% of that value.