Mumbai's first bitcoin millionaire breaks down the latest cryptocurrency

Now, it is possible to-quite literally-put your money to work for you. Well, in theory at least, thanks to the Ethereum network.

Over the past eight months, investors and analysts have noticed the rocketing rise of Ether, the three-year-old cryptocurrency associated with Ethereum, a network based on the blockchain technology, exactly like the Bitcoin. For those who are new to the world of cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ether, these are digital forms of money that live online, whose movements are recorded in embedded algorithms. Bitcoin was the world's first major cryptocurrency.

City's cryptocurrency millionaire
We reached out to one of Mumbai's first Bitcoin (BTC) millionaires, Akshay Gautam Haldipur. He made his first crore last year. At the time, Akshay had picked up four Bitcoins for $20-25 each. Today, Bitcoins are valued at roughly $2,300 each. "Ethereum is the new technology that people have jumped onto, as the network provides flexibility for products if you're implementing it at a company. My projection for Ether is that it should touch close to around $700-800 by the end of the year if everything sails smoothly. It definitely has a faster growth rate than BTC, which, predictably should touch close to between $4,500 and $5,500 by December 2017 and between $11,500 and $13,000 by early next year if all goes well."

However, Bitcoin remains limited in terms of functionality. Enter Ethereum-'a decentralised platform that runs Smart Contracts: applications that run exactly as programmed without any possibility of downtime, censorship, fraud or third party interference.' What sets Ethereum apart is that the code written on its blockchain cannot be altered or hacked. The Ethereum platform is married to its cryptocurrency asset Ether (ETH), and allows you to build and execute smart contracts and Distributed Autonomous Applications (DApps) without human interaction. After this, it is the Ether that helps in executing these apps and contracts. In short, this means that much more advanced functionality and applications can be developed above it (Ethereum).