The long road has finally lead us here, I would like to welcome you to my crypto Academy Season 4 Beginners' Course for @awesononso

Questions

What is a Cryptocurrency?
What is Cryptography and how does it make cryptocurrencies secure?
Explore the Steem Genesis Block and Sign in as proof of completion.

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What is a Cryptocurrency?

From the beginning of time man has always found a means to transact and exchange money from one person to another. In the early age we used to trade by barter, then we were introduced to solid currency (cash). With passing of time man has found another digital currency that cannot be seen or touched and also used as a means of exchange. Yes, I am talking about cryptocurrency, Oxford Dictionary defines Cryptocurrency as;

a digital currency in which transactions are verified and records maintained by a decentralized system using cryptography, rather than by a centralized authority.

What is Currency ?

Currency is a means of used by individual to transact business.

Currency is a medium of exchange for goods and services. In short, it's money, in the form of paper or coins, usually issued by a government and generally accepted at its face value as a method of payment.-^Source

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Cryptocurrency is a digital currency where transactions are carried out from one end to another through a digital blockchain in a decentralized system. Bitcoin was first released in 2009 as the first decentralized cryptocurrency after which we were introduced to many other cryptocurrencies. Cryptocurrency is secured by cryptography, which makes it difficult to replicate or release fake copies of a particular coin. A blockchain is a system that secures transactions of cryptocurrency were you can safely buy, trade and sell cryptocurrency.

A cryptocurrency is a form of digital asset based on a network that is distributed across a large number of computers. This decentralized structure allows them to exist outside the control of governments and central authorities.-^Investopedia

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Why do we need a blockchain ?

Blockchain helps to secure transactions and helps in traceability and tracking of transactions. The first blockchain website (Blockchain.com) began as the first Bitcoin blockchain explorer on 30th of August 2011.

In blockchain data is the most important terminology, data is stored in thousands of nodes, when there is loss of data in one node there are thousands of reference nodes. There are many types of cryptocurrency that are now in existence, and many more are still to come.

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What is Cryptography and how does it make cryptocurrencies secure?

Cryptography is sharing messages that are encrypted between two people that are accessing the Blockchain. There are different aims for using cryptography; they allow transactions to be discrete and hidden/anonymous. Cryptography uses codes to send and receive data, process information in a secure format. It is used to verify originality of the data, it can be compared to the real life signature. It was proposed by Satoshi Nakamoto, he created the idea of cryptography and posted the first one on a cryptography message board in 2009. Come to think of it, bitcoin is just a common code, how can anyone not be able to remake this code? He solved this problem by forming the private key encryption that was unique for each user.

How does cryptography make cryptocurrency secure?

As previously mentioned there what's stops somebody replicating a code like bitcoin or Ethereum. The private keys is special to every user, you may share your public keys but the private key is the key to all your funds in your wallet. All your assets are your as long as you have your Private key. You are advised to your keys in all platforms it being whether online on a hard copy. They are also other keys in the wallet that are important as well they include; memo key, public key and posting keys.

This method helps achieve the two important functions of authentication and encryption for cryptocurrency transactions. The former is achieved as the public key verifies the paired private key for the genuine sender of the message, while the latter is accomplished as only the paired private key holder can successfully decrypt the encrypted message.-^Source

Explore the Steem Genesis Block and Sign in as proof of completion?

Firstly logged into the ^Source

Below is a step by step process;

1.After logging into steemitworld

2.Click on ok for the blocktrade number 1.

3.The various information was displayed

4.Then I signed into my account

The Conclusion

Thank you very much for reading this post, please remember to follow and comment. Special regards to @awesononso for the lecture.