Читать книгу The Book about Cryptocurrency №1. Second edition expanded - Viacheslav Nosko - Страница 10

Bitcoin and any other currency cannot be touched in person, nor are they minted by any mint in the world.

Although the most widespread and stable cryptocurrencies have their own symbols, on par with the dollar ($), pound (£), euro (€), ruble, and so on.

Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies exist only in virtual reality. That said, they can be exchanged for real money.

Another difference between crypto and fiat money is that they arise themselves in the digital space. And anyone can produce (mine) bitcoin. No central bank or state is needed for this.

Cryptocurrencies appear through ICO (investment), as a result of mining (maintenance of special servers) and forging (forging) – the formation of new blocks (branches) in already existing digital currencies.

Nevertheless, today bitcoin and other currencies are quite realistically turning into living money – into houses, apartments, trips, yachts and other pleasures.

By the way, in the first year of Bitcoin’s creation, a legendary transaction was realized – the first purchase of real goods for cryptocurrency. For 10,000 bitcoins were bought two pizzas totaling $41.

So «wastefully» spent his savings American programmer Laszlo Hanyecz (Laszlo Hanyecz). The thread on the forum is still available at the link – https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=137.0.

Now convert that to the current exchange rate and grab your head. Today (July 2023 – ed.) 10,000 bitcoins are equivalent to $300 million US dollars, and the total capitalization of all cryptocurrencies is $1.2 trillion.

The most popular types of cryptocurrencies

According to https://coinmarketcap.com/, in July 2023, there are more than 10,000 cryptocurrencies registered in the world.

Of course, their value varies. And the fate of most small coins can turn out any way you want. Some coins will take off, some will disappear from the lists of exchanges. But nevertheless, the fact remains that blockchain technology allows you to create an unlimited number of types of crypto-money, the capitalization of which, depending on the exchange rate of major currencies (Bitcoin, Ethereum, etc.), the total approaching $ 300 billion (at the time of writing this material – this price is always fluctuating).

At the same time, the cryptocurrency market is characterized by high volatility. And this means strong fluctuations in the rate. In a matter of days, or even hours, the same bitcoin can collapse by several hundred dollars, and may even grow.

Hence, the potential of each new moment is quite high. It can grow by 50, 100 and even 1000 times. This is what makes it possible to move crypto markets and make money from them.

Each type of cryptocurrency has its own pros and cons, its own value and its own potential for growth.

But collectively:

● they are all universal,

● they can be exchanged for either other cryptocurrencies or fiat money,

● they can be saved,

● they can be used to pay for goods and services,

● their exchange rate is subject to supply and demand.

What are the most popular currencies today? Whose capitalization (the total value of all issued cryptocurrency coins) exceeds a billion dollars?

So far, the top 10 looks like this (data as of July 2023):

• Bitcoin.

• Ethereum.

• Tether.

• BNB.

• USD Coin.

• XRP.

• Cardano.

• Dogecoin.

• Solana.

• TRON.

Bitcoin (BTC) is the first and most widespread digital currency. All subsequent ones appeared on its basis.

Ethereum – the authorship of the currency is attributed to Vitalik Buterin. It is one of the most popular cryptocurrencies.

Tether is a cryptocurrency token issued by Tether Limited, which claims that its value is 80 percent provided by the stock of U.S. dollars in bank accounts or its equivalent. The main idea of the developers of this token is to provide cryptocurrency market participants with an opportunity to use a stable digital asset steyblocoin, the rate of which is tied to the U.S. dollar exchange rate and does not experience such strong fluctuations as the rates of other cryptocurrencies. Tether is issued on the Omni Layer platform, which is an add-on to the bitcoin blockchain.

Cardano is a decentralized public cryptocurrency project, a third-generation platform developed in the Haskell programming language. The project solves the problem of fast and cheap creation of decentralized applications and smart contracts in a secure and scalable way. It entered the market in 2015.