siliconindia | | JANUARY 20228AS CRYPTOCURRENCIES BECOME MORE WIDELY USED, THE DECENTRALIZED LEDGER TECHNOLOGY, BLOCKCHAIN, ON WHICH CRYPTO IS BASED, IS THE ACTUAL MASTERPIECEIN FOCUSWHAT IS THE SIGNIFICANCE OF CRYPTOCURRENCY & WHY SHOULD I CARE?By si Teame're no longer limited to reading about Cryptocur-rencies in the business sec-tions of websites or finan-cial newspapers. There are now entire sections of news outlets devoted to Bitcoin and other crypto-currencies. An increasing number of countries are scrambling to imple-ment legislation and rules that allow or make it easier for corporations to conduct initial coin offerings or token issuing. Is the name 'cryptocurrency' appropriate? Perhaps 'digital currency' is a better term.Do cryptocurrencies, by whatever name we choose, deserve all of this attention? Is it really so important to us? What will be the long-term impact of crypto? We will try to find answers to these questions. A CLOSER LOOK AT BITCOINS & OTHER CRYPTOCURRENCIESIn practise, bitcoin is entirely decentralised, as blockchain-based services are supposed to be. It is not supervised by any central bank or monetary body because it is a financial-based blockchain. A peer-to-peer community computer network, or 'nodes', is responsible for maintaining it. It's the same if you understand Bit-Torrent.'Distributed ledger' is the term used to describe the 'distributed public ledger' that is run using encryption. A process known as 'mining' is used to digitally verify Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies like it, making them safe to use. Miners use complicated digital codes to mathematically verify every piece of information that enters the Bitcoin blockchain. All new entries and updates to the ledger will be confirmed and verified by the blockchain network.Even while it is inherently anonymous, the mathematics underpinning it creates a worldwide public transaction record, thus every transaction can be traced through cryptography in its final form.WHAT IS THE SIGNIFICANCE OF CRYPTOCURRENCIES?To begin, keep in mind that there are many different kinds of cryptocurrencies; nevertheless, for the purposes of this article, we'll concentrate on the two most widely known and utilized, Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH).As the first financial blockchain, Bitcoin was developed in 2008 by a person (or group, depending on your point of view) going by the name of Satoshi Nakamoto. Its value has skyrocketed, and you may have read articles like 'If I had brought $100 of bitcoin back in 2010, I'd have almost $100 million now' or about Bitcoin's first billionaires, which circulate around the Internet at breakneck speed. Bitcoin is becoming more widely accepted as a form of payment by merchants and online vendors.Ethereum is quite similar to Bitcoin in that it can be used for more than just financial transactions, such as mining. Smart contracts, for example, can be used to transfer and mine Ether, Ethereum's own digital asset, using W
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