Information Finding Championship - Season 1: Round 9 entry - Cryptocurrency
Money is a very primitive form of price exchange. That's why they have the widest distribution. They began as beads, shells, gold and silver coins, later turned into paper money. In the early years money was provided with gold, but then no more. When they became electronic, no one even wondered whether money should be based on something.
When you think about a gold-backed currency you will understand gold alone does not cost anything. The price of gold is the difficulty of extraction and reserves. If tomorrow a gold meteorite falls to Earth then gold will depreciate to zero. It's so simple.
Gold will cost zero, but no money. Why? Because there's only one formula that forms the value of money it's supply and demand.
Money as usual performs the functions of convenient storage and transfer. And this time the cryptocurrencies arrive on the scene.
There are 3 eras of currency: Commodity based, politically based, and now, math based.
— Chris Dixon
Cryptocurrency is a new revolutionary type of currency. Like any other currency they only have value because people think it has value. Cryptocurrency is so called because the consensus-keeping process is ensured with strong cryptography for security.
There are technically over 1000 cryptocurrencies in 2018, but only a handful are relevant.
| Currency | Description |
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Bitcoin Bitcoin was the first mainstream well designed cryptocurrency and was released as open source. It holds the 1st spot on cryptocurrency price. |
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Litecoin If Bitcoin is Gold, then Litecoin is Silver. It was designed to be used for smaller payments with a faster transaction confirmation time and higher network capacity due to more blocks being produced. |
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Ethereum Ethereum acts as a platform to create ‘smart contracts’. Smart contract is a computer protocol designed to conclude and support commercial contracts in blockchain technology. Ethereum can be used as a framework for another to create new coin and currency on top of it. |
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IOTA IOTA is a next generation public distributed ledger that does not use a blockchain. IOTA is the cryptocurrency of the future. It uses a new quantum-proof protocol, known as the Tangle, is scalable, lightweight and for the first time ever makes it possible to transfer value without any fees. |
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Darkcoin Darkcoin, known as Dash and XCoin, is an open source peer-to-peer cryptocurrency. Dash is Digital Cash You Can Spend Anywhere. It was forked out of Bitcoin to offer faster and more private transactions to users. |
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Steem Steem is a blockchain-based cryptocurrency used to power the platform Steemit. Steemit allows users to publish and share digital content for which they are financially rewarded in the form of Steem. |
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Tether Tether is a cryptocurrency whose value roughly mirrors the value of the US Dollar. Supposedly, each Tether is backed by a US Dollar held in trust. |
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Dogecoin Dogecoin is an open source peer-to-peer criptocurrency featuring a likeness of the Shiba Inu dog from the ‘Doge’ Internet meme. Dogecoin went from a joke equivalent of Bitcoin to one of the world's most valuable cryptocurrencies. |
How does cryptocurrency work?
Infographic explaining cryptocurrency work from Blockgeeks.
Cryptocurrency currencies take the concept of money, and they take it native into computers, where everything is settled with computers and doesn't require external institutions or trusted third parties to validate things.
— Naval Ravikant
How cryptocurrency works by the example of Bitcoin.
This year Forbes published a list of the richest people in cryptocurrency for the first time. The list contains 19 people.
In the world of cryptocurrency, fortunes can be made overnight, and the winners of this digital lottery differ from those in previous manias. The shadowy beginnings, at once anarchistic, utopian and libertarian, have drawn an odd lot of pioneers – from antiestablishment cypherpunks and electricity-guzzling 'miners' to prescient Silicon Valley financiers and a larger-than-usual assortment of the just plain lucky 'hodlers'.
— Forbes
Cryptocurrency is an emerging market and it's still unstable. In combination of many factors, the price of сryptocurrency can quickly rise and fall, making it risky investment without proper research carried out.
Cryptocurrencies are highly volatile.
Invest or trade at your own risk with money you can afford to lose.
Invest or trade at your own risk with money you can afford to lose.
Nice to see a new competitor in IFC! Excited to see some more of your future post! I just made one for challenge 10 you can check out I added an extra little bonus other competitors!
Great entry and article! I think this has been one of the most helpful I've seen so far.
I do have one question though. This part..
That was in regards to tangle, but it was my understanding that steemit/steem also does this? Doesn't it? No transaction fees? Or am I wrong?
Also I've seen other newer coins which are claiming to do that as well, I've seen it around a few times.
Yes, you're right.
But maybe IOTA was the first to make fee-free transactions.
Thank you for this information, I am very new to the crypto scene and this helped me to understand it in a bit simpler way, thank you again for sharing~