Cryptocurrencies Explained, in Plain English
Everything you need to know about what cryptocurrencies are, how they work, and how they're valued.
Sean Williams
Sean Williams
(TMFUltraLong)
Jan 2, 2018 at 8:34AM
Author Bio
By now you've probably heard about the cryptocurrency craze. Either a family member, friend, neighbor, doctor, Uber driver, sales associate, server, barista, or passer-by on the street, has probably told you how he or she is getting rich quick with virtual currencies like bitcoin, Ethereum, Ripple, or one of the lesser-known 1,300-plus investable cryptocurrencies.
But how much do you really know about them? Considering just how many questions I've received out of the blue from the aforementioned group of people over the last month, the answer is probably, "not a lot."
The word cryptocurrency written atop semiconductor chips and circuitry.
IMAGE SOURCE: GETTY IMAGES.
Today, we'll change that. We're going to walk through the basics of cryptocurrencies, step by step, and explain things in plain English. No crazy technical jargon here. Just sticks and stones examples of how today's cryptocurrencies work, what they're ultimately trying to accomplish, and how they're being valued.
Let's get started.
What are cryptocurrencies?
Simply put, cryptocurrencies are electronic peer-to-peer currencies. They don't physically exist. You can't pick up a bitcoin and hold it in your hand, or pull one out of your wallet. But just because you can't physically hold a bitcoin, it doesn't mean they aren't worth anything, as you've probably noticed by the rapidly rising prices of virtual currencies over the past couples of months.
How many cryptocurrencies are there?
The number is always changing, but according to CoinMarketCap.com as of Dec. 30, there were around 1,375 different virtual coins that investors could potentially buy. It's worth noting that the barrier to entry is particularly low among cryptocurrencies. In other words, this means that if you have time, money, and a team of people that understands how to write computer code, you have an opportunity to develop your own cryptocurrency. It likely means new cryptocurrencies will continue entering the space as time passes.
Why were cryptocurrencies invented?
Technically, the idea of an electronic peer-to-peer currency was being tinkered with decades ago, but it wasn't truly successful until 2008, when bitcoin was conceived. The basis of bitcoin's creation, and all virtual currencies that have since followed, was to fix a number of perceived flaws with the way money is transmitted from one party to another.
What flaws? For example, think about how long it can take for a bank to settle a cross-border payment, or how financial institutions have been reaping the rewards of fees by acting as a third-party middleman during transactions. Cryptocurrencies work around the traditional financial system through the use of blockchain technology.
In bitcoin, ideally old-version miners would realize that their blocks were rejected, and would upgrade. As more miners upgrade, the chain with predominantly new blocks becomes the longest, which would further orphan old version blocks, which would lead to more miners upgrading, and the system self-corrects. Since new version blocks are accepted by both old and upgraded nodes, the new version blocks eventually win.обмен tether ethereum news claymore monero bitcoin сатоши field bitcoin надежность bitcoin автокран bitcoin carding bitcoin pixel bitcoin обзор bitcoin bitcoin poloniex ethereum кошельки coffee bitcoin
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github ethereum Beyond these classic monetary features, Bitcoin is also:No excess heat to deal withbitcoin etf testnet bitcoin fasterclick bitcoin When you use bitcoin you are sending bitcoins from one bitcoin address to another bitcoin address. Kind of like when you are sending someone an email. Bitcoin addresses look a little bit different, they are a long string of letters and numbers. Most bitcoin addresses start with a ‘1’ but some may start with a ‘3’. Here is a bitcoin address I used for another tutorial:json bitcoin total cryptocurrency playstation bitcoin перспектива bitcoin 2018 bitcoin ethereum курс doubler bitcoin In Eastern philosophy, the kinship of zero and infinity made sense: only in a state of absolute nothingness can possibility become infinite. Buddhist logic insists that everything is endlessly intertwined: a vast causal network in which all is inexorably interlinked, such that no single thing can truly be considered independent — as having its own isolated, non-interdependent essence. In this view, interrelation is the sole source of substantiation. Fundamental to their teachings, this truth is what Buddhists call dependent co-origination, meaning that all things depend on one another. The only exception to this truth is nirvana: liberation from the endless cycles of reincarnation. In Buddhism, the only pathway to nirvana is through pure emptinessкредиты bitcoin bitcoin fan minergate ethereum ethereum кошелька bitcoin вирус почему bitcoin miner bitcoin moneybox bitcoin bitcoin программа bitcoin лохотрон bitcoin хайпы bitcoin майнер A number that represents the difficulty required to mine this blockIn 2009, the Bitcoin network went online. Bitcoin is a proof-of-work cryptocurrency that, like Finney's RPoW, is also based on the Hashcash PoW. But in Bitcoin, double-spend protection is provided by a decentralized P2P protocol for tracking transfers of coins, rather than the hardware trusted computing function used by RPoW. Bitcoin has better trustworthiness because it is protected by computation. Bitcoins are 'mined' using the Hashcash proof-of-work function by individual miners and verified by the decentralized nodes in the P2P bitcoin network.He elaborated in a subsequent book: 'Businessmen will be constantly experimenting, controlling more or less, creating a moving equilibrium' between full-time and temporary contract labor. These impacts are also consistent with the stated goals of Satoshi Nakamoto and the Cypherpunks, whose resistance to institutional authority is rooted in a resentment for the managerial class and for the laws that protect and incentivize proprietary software.bitcoin 10 bitcoin сбербанк ethereum сбербанк bitcoin email bitcoin get tether комиссии bitcoin eu программа tether 50 bitcoin monero ico bitcoin club capitalization bitcoin video bitcoin
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The key point here is that Bitcoin as a currency can't be inflated by any single person or entity, like a government, as there's no way to increase supply past a certain amount.ethereum russia
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In simple terms, updating a cryptocurrency protocol or code is called forking. Fork implies that a Blockchain splits into two branches. It can happen when the participants of the network cannot come to an agreement with regards to the consensus algorithm and new rules to validate transactions.bitcoin отзывы bitcoin 2010 bot bitcoin bitcoin cost 600 bitcoin bitcoin видеокарты добыча bitcoin ethereum block location bitcoin bitcoin parser trade cryptocurrency pos ethereum bitcoin игры fork ethereum андроид bitcoin bitcoin ishlash bitcoin конвертер Cryptocurrency and security describes attempts to obtain digital currencies by illegal means, for instance through phishing, scamming, a supply chain attack or hacking, or the measures to prevent unauthorized cryptocurrency transactions, and storage technologies. In extreme cases even a computer which is not connected to any network can be hacked.bitcoin ваучер bitcoin падение 16 bitcoin bitcoin talk рейтинг bitcoin bitcoin растет
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