Crypto Academy Season 4 [Beginner's course] Task 3|| Genesis block
WHAT IS CRYPTOCURRENCY? WHAT IS CRYPTOGRAPHY AND HOW DOES IT MAKE CRYPTOCURRENCIES SECURE? EXPLORE THE STEEM GENESIS BLOCK AND SIGN IN AS PROOF OF COMPLETION
WHAT IS CRYPTOCURRENCY?
WHAT IS CRYPTOGRAPHY AND HOW DOES IT MAKE CRYPTOCURRENCIES SECURE?
EXPLORE THE STEEM GENESIS BLOCK AND SIGN IN AS PROOF OF COMPLETION
WHAT IS CRYPTOCURRENCY?
Cryptocurrency is a binary data used as a medium of exchange for goods and services or for transaction of digital currencies. Cryptocurrencies are digital currencies because they cannot be seen or felt but can only be viewed through the screen and it is used to transact online. The cryptocurrency records are maintained thigh a Decentralised system meaning the there is no particular entity in charge of the management and control of users transaction as every user has a say in the system.
Recently, the cryptocurrency has gained wide acceptance in almost all the countries of the world. The first and most popular cryptocurrency is Bitcoin and thousands of more cryptocurrencies has been launched and more is yet to be launched.
Some basic features of cryptocurrency are:
It is Decentralised
The cryptocurrency functions in a Decentralised system in the sense that users manage and control the system as there is no central authority in charge of the system and as such every user is expected to secure his assets from hackers.It is secured
Unlike in the case of physical currencies where assets are saved in Banks, the cryptocurrencies does not stand the risk of being mismanaged or lost especially when the user's keys are secured as the system has a tight secured.
WHAT IS CRYPTOGRAPHY AND HOW DOES IT MAKE CRYPTOCURRENCIES SECURE?
Cryptography is derived from the two phrases "crypt" meaning hidden and "graphy" meaning which means writing. Cryptography in full means hidden message. Cryptography is a system used to secure vital informations so that only people it is meant for can decode it.
Cryptography is simply the act of encrypting informations and preserving it in such a way that only authorized users can decrypt such informations. Cryptography is used to secure cryptocurrencies.
With cryptography, vital informations are encrypted into secured format that are unreadable to secure crypto assets.
How cryptography secures cryptocurrencies
Like I said earlier, cryptography secures cryptocurrencies and below is a list of ways through which security of crypto assets is some via cryptography.
Public key cryptography: This system uses a pair of keys which is the encrypted private and public keys. The public key is usually the sending key which can only be decrypted by the private key. The receiver can decode the raw information using a private key which only him can access. In this system, it is only the recipient with the private key who can decrypt the public key and the informations.
Hashing: This system of cryptography is basically used to encrypt transactions between two account addresses. This is a system of cryptography that is used to convert any size of data into unique cipher texts. Hashing operation is different from any other cryptographic method in the sense that it cannot be reversed using a particular key.
Symmetric encryption cryptography: This is similar to the public key cryptography but the only difference is that the same key used to encrypt message at the sending end is used to decrypt the same message at the receiving end.
EXPLORE THE STEEM GENESIS BLOCK AND SIGN IN AS PROOF OF COMPLETION
To explore the steem Genesis block you have to first of all visit the website
And the next view on opening the website is the homepage as seen below and then click on "Block explorer".
Another page popped up where I had to to click "Ok" thereby choosing 1 as the block number to explore.
From the next page that opened up you can view the Bitcoin Genesis block explorer as seen below.
From the seen details you can view the Timestamp which is 2016-03-24,17:05:00
Block ID 0000000109833ce5bbfb3f6225b39ee10086
The witness is initminer.
Then signing in as a period, I clicked on the sign in button as seen here
And a mini box popped up to add my details which I did from the picture below
After which my profile reflected in the sign in space as seen in the image below.
Conclusion
In conclusion, I'd like to appreciate professor @awesononso for leading me through another too to explore more information on the steem Blockchain aside the normal lecture and for the drill to reach more on cryptocurrency and cryptography concept... It was worth the exposure.
Note: All screenshots are mine gotten from the steemworld.org tool.
Cc.
@awesononso