What is the cryptocurrency?

At the most basic level, a cryptocurrency is really no different than the money you have in your wallet in the sense that they have no intrinsic value and cryptocurrency are just bits of data while real money is just pieces of paper.

Unlike fiat money, Bitcoins and other cryptocurrencies have no central bank that controls them which means that cryptocurrencies can be sent directly from user to user without any credit cards or banks acting as the intermediary. The major advantage of cryptocurrencies is that you can’t print them like central banks do to create fiat money.

When you print lots of money, inflation goes up which makes the currency value going down. Since there is a limited amount of Bitcoins and this holds true for the majority of the other cryptocurrencies, the supply side can’t increase which makes Bitcoin less prone to being affected by inflation.