A cryptocurrency like bitcoin is a digital or virtual currency that is secured by cryptography, which makes it nearly impossible to counterfeit or double-spend.
A defining feature of cryptocurrencies is that they are generally not issued by any central authority, rendering them theoretically immune to government interference or manipulation.
Sounds good, but the average person has a lot of trouble getting their mind around the cryptocurrency concept. Yet, financial analysts are quick to point out that the crypto space is evolving at light speed. Last year alone, the world witnessed the rise of several Ethereum competitors such as Solana and Avalanche as well as the taking-off of layer two solutions like Polygon and Arbitrum, which enable scalability of the Ethereum ecosystem.
Ethereum is a decentralized blockchain platform that establishes a peer-to-peer network that securely executes and verifies application code, called smart contracts. Smart contracts allow participants to transact with each other without a trusted central authority.
With an increasingly number of organizations turning to cryptocurrency, many experts in this field feel that soon there will be widespread adoption of the crypto ecosystem. One major reason for this change is that large financial gatekeepers are making it easier for consumers to transact in cryptocurrencies.
PayPal and its subsidiary Venmo, for example, both recently enabled crypto trading on their platforms. PayPal data showed that users who bought crypto on the PayPal app logged in twice as much as they did before PayPal allowed such transactions.
Additionally, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) introduced Micro Ether future contracts in December 2021 and CoinDesk has also noted that the number of “bitcoin whales” (addresses that own over 1,000 bitcoin) has been increasing rapidly since the end of 2020.
Want to learn more? Tonex offers Fundamentals of Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency, an interactive 2-day course that covers the fundamentals of Bitcoin, Cryptocurrency, Blockchain technology and more.
For more information, questions, comments, contact us.