Читать книгу Cryptocurrency All-in-One For Dummies - Peter Kent, Kiana Danial - Страница 14

The first ever cryptocurrency was (drumroll please) Bitcoin! You probably have heard of Bitcoin more than any other thing in the crypto industry. Bitcoin was the first product of the first blockchain developed by some anonymous entity who went by the name Satoshi Nakamoto. Satoshi released the idea of Bitcoin in 2008 and described it as a “purely peer-to-peer version” of electronic money.

Bitcoin was the first established cryptocurrency, but many attempts at creating digital currencies occurred years before Bitcoin was formally introduced.

Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin are created through a process called mining. Very different than mining ore, mining cryptocurrencies involves powerful computers solving complicated problems. Book 6 covers mining, but flip to Book 6, Chapter 1 for an introduction to cryptocurrency mining.

Bitcoin remained the only cryptocurrency until 2011. Then Bitcoin enthusiasts started noticing flaws in it, so they decided to create alternative coins, also known as altcoins, to improve Bitcoin’s design for things like speed, security, anonymity, and more. Among the first altcoins was Litecoin, which aimed to become the silver to Bitcoin’s gold. But at the time of this writing, over 5,000 cryptocurrencies are available, and the number is expected to increase in the future. Check out Chapter 4 of this minibook for just a sampling of cryptocurrencies that are available now.