INTRODUCTION

Hello my all dear Steemitians! I hope you all achieving your goals. My name is Pratik Jumle and I'm from India.
I have read and studied the professor @awesononso's post on the topic "The Genesis Block" very carefully. And now I'm posting this homework post for the question 3 as follows:-

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

What is a Cryptocurrency?

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Source

Cryptourrency is a kind of digital/virtual currency which is secured by cryptography on a Decentralized blockchain system. The term "Cryptourrency" is made from the combination of two words i.e "Crypto" and "Currency".
The word Crypto means hidden or secret and the word Currency means the medium of financial exchanges. By combining both this words a new word is formed which is "Cryptourrency" meaning virtual currency which is not physical.

Cryptocurrencies represents value of an online store in the form of tokens and coins by the makeup of computer codes. The best thing about cryptocurrencies is that it works on a p2p function hence their is no involvement of third party or any kind of single controlling authority! Cryptocurrencies owners are free to use their assets as per their wish without taking anyone's permission. It is totally different from centralized banking system who has control over their user's assets and transactions and also they can view their customers profile and transactions. We can ise cryptocurrencies as a medium of payment for purchasing/exchanging online goods and services. As per today there are more than 15,000 different cryptocurrencies present in the world. as per the source https://coinmarketcap.com/

What is Cryptography and how does it make cryptocurrencies secure?

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The word "Cryptourrency" is derived from the original word "Cryptography". The word cryptography means the art of transmitting secret messages very securely whom can only be understood by the recipient(receiver). The term Cryptography is made up by combining two words i.e Crypto [originally "KRYPTOS"(a greek word)] and Graph [originally "GRAPHEIN" (a Greek word)], In simple language Crypto means hidden or secret as i said earlier and Graph means to write. Cryptocurrencies are successful only because cryptography is more technical and it is encrypted on an advanced level. Moreover, cryptocurrencies are anonymous and secure only because of cryptography and users can do their transactional operations without any kind of interference from any kind of third party.

In cryptourrency , cryptography with public and private keys are used. Private keys are used while doing transactional while Public keys are the adress of wallets. These keys Plays a vital role in cryptourrency as without private keys no one can stole anyone's coins.
For Example, when an user send their coin to any adress they become encrypted on the public key and immediately the transfer of ownership is being recorded on the ledger. To decrypt this coins one needs the private key and without this key no-one can decrypt the coins, resulting in coins being remained encrypted.

A simple representation of how cryptography works through an image:-

Source

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

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Genesis means beginning and In Steem Genesis Block means the first block that was mined on the steem blockchain. The Steem genesis block was built by @steemchiller and we access this through https://steemworld.org.

Now this are the steps we need to follow to explore the Steem Genesis Block. (I explored this through my mobile device) :-

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Step 1:

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Firstly we need to login to https://steemworld.org.

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Step 2:

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Now click on the Block explorer option given on homepage as follows-

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Step 3:

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Now click Ok for Block 1

Type 1 in the box because one is the genesis block.

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Step 4:

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Now you can see the details of the genesis block as follows:

Basic Details

• Timestamp :- 2016-03-24, 21:35:00
• Block Id :- 0000000109833ce528d5bbfb3f6225b39ee 10086
• Previous Id :- 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000
• Witness :- initminer

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Step 5:

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Now, click on sign in option given on the the upper right corner and then enter your steemit login credentials such as your username and private posting key.

Now information about your account will display. You can check it.

Conclusion

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Cryptocurrencies are digital currencies supported by cryptography making them more secure and transparent. Hence It is more reliable than centralized transactions. Also i learnt about steem genesis block and i explored it through steemworld.org.

Also a big thanks to professor @awesononso's post. It was really helpful for me to get basic knowledge about cryptocurrencies and cryptography and their security.

Thanks for Reading!

Regards

@pratikjumle29