What is Cryptocurrency and how it works.
Money today is in the form of paper, physical coins and as well digital information, this digital information is controlled by the government and banks. If you have a bank account with 100€ and you don't have any money in physical form, you can simply go to the bank and withdraw such money and the bank will reduce the amount from your account.
Cryptocurrency is the same principal, it exists booth in the physical and digital form, but every time an exchange is made a connection to the internet is required to insert this new transaction into the blockchain.
What is the blockchain? The blockchain has the information of all the trades made since day 1. Therefor, if once you had to rely on an institution to print a bill very hard to fake, now mathematical equations validate the veracity of every single transaction. Making it impossible to fake a trade. see topic: "The bitcoin mathematical formulas explained" for more detailed explanation.
Individuals can choose to print a physical version of an amount of a Cryptocurrency in QR code, but for the transaction to occur a validation process must take place to update the blockchain.
At the very end, Cryptocurrency is just like money but with a global user supported bank where anyone who desires can join in and "mine" bitcoins, which is a term to describe the process of having a computational machine taking care of the mathematical equations that enable the transfers of all users of the same Cryptocurrency. A % of this transfers is rewarded to the miner.(new information on mining coming soon!)
There are several types of Cryptocurrency, bitcoin being the most famous one at this moment, brokers enable us to trade this Cryptocurrency in between them, allowing anyone to associate a new Cryptocurrency to a project of is own(ex: store credit on a specific website) and a new blockchain is created, allowing investors to buy from this Cryptocurrency and support the project by stimulating the market.see topic: "Alt coins and other types of bitcoins."
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