Coincidentally, I’ve actually been toying with the idea of writing an actual post about it. As usual, I had no clue on where to begin. So here’s a brief introduction to crypto.
Crypto- ; is a prefix – which means concealed, secret.
The word crypto is derived from the Greek word, ‘kruptos’ which translates to ‘hidden‘.
It is unsure who actually coined the term ‘cryptocurrency’, but the term actually represents a digital or virtual currency that uses cryptography for security. A cryptocurrency is almost impossible to counterfeit due to its security features.
As of today, there are over 900 cryptocurrencies available throughout the virtual globe.
Here are a list of some examples, including my favorite steemit – ;
Ethereum
Litecoin
Ripple
Bitcoin Cash
Dash
Dogecoin
Ethereum Classic
Auroracoin
Bitcoin
Informatively, I wanted to write about the birth of Bitcoin and how it became implemented in the infamously known marketplace called ‘Silk Road‘ and it’s steady growth.
On November 1st, 2008, a man known by the alias of Satoshi Nakamoto, appeared on a cryptography mailing list who cited, “I’ve been working on a new electronic cash system that’s fully peer-to-peer, with no trusted third party.”
Satoshi Nakamoto officially released Bitcoin in February 2009 via an online post, stating how he humbly developed a new open source P2P e-cash system called ‘Bitcoin’, asking users to “give it a try”. He also provided a long-winded explanation about how technological advancements today have mad encryption of information available to the average computer user, in layman terms – “Users could secure their own data in a way that was physcially impossible for others to access.”
With that being said, Bitcoin is a decentralized cryptocurrency that is available for trading & investment purposes and purchasing things online, as opposed to fiat currency.
Now, I’m not going to state how much is Bitcoin currently worth at the moment, because – like all currencies, the value of Bitcoin is always fluctuating, however not so much to the point that it’s ‘volatile’ though.
These transactions occur between a transfer of value in Bitcoin wallets that gets included in the block chain. Bitcoin wallets keep a secret piece of data called a private key or seed, which is used to sign transactions, providing a mathematical proof that they have come from the owner of the wallet.