Cryptocurrency is all the craze right now, but what is it? We’ve all heard of BitCoin, LiteCoin, and DogeCoin, but there is still a lot of fog around the exact meaning of how a cryptocurrency works. Many people believe that the first cryptocurrency invented was BitCoin.
Started in 2009, this digital currency, as the name suggests, is not physically present as paper money, a plastic card, or a metal coin. It’s digitally present and stored, and transactions and trading all happen online. Its all-online storage provides a safer alternative than classical transactions like cheques that can be misplaced or digital payments that may be hacked too. Unlike a credit card, it doesn’t have a transaction fee, and it is legally regulated as well.
Many people speculate that it’s a short-term phenomenon that will go as quickly as it came, but it’s been field-tested for over 11 years now, so the future for crypto seems only to shine brighter.
Critics, however, discourage it, stating that it’s an investment into a Ponzi scheme because it can’t be traced. The funny thing, however, is that we operate paper money in the same way. After all, our lives run on pieces of paper with numbers written on them. Exchange rates are determined by confidence as well, which would explain the high valuation of BitCoin too. 1 BitCoin is valued at around $36,000, which is roughly INR 26,19,486.
Forecast analysts have no way to predict the growth of the cryptocurrency since there is no basis for an actual evaluation to be conducted. Moreover, it fluctuates drastically from time to time, and the stability is shallow when it comes to valuation. With more and more versions of cryptocurrency emerging, it becomes more challenging to comprehend the market and verify genuine currencies from fake ones.
It is undoubtedly a robust evolution in digital transactions as we know them, but stability and regulation need to control the coin. Safety and security are in doubt when it comes to cryptocurrency, so fraudulent coins must be identified and eradicated. Cryptocurrency is here as the future of transactions, so it’s time we buckle up and buck up to make the conscious decision on whether we want to invest in cryptocurrency.
