4 Reasons You Should Care About Crypto
💸 Part 1 of a "Fundamentals in 5 Parts" series
Welcome to Crypto Sundays!
This is the first of a 5-part series on the basics of crypto. By the end, you’ll learn:
A step-by-step explanation of blockchains and Bitcoin
How to buy, send, and receive cryptocurrencies
Answers to questions like “Is it legal?”, “Which one do I buy” and much more…
Now, let’s jump straight to why you should care about cryptocurrencies.
We're used to withdrawing cash from ATMs, transferring money via online banking, and storing gold as a reserve. Cryptocurrencies offer an alternative to this financial system.
They fulfill the same role as any currency: they’re a medium of exchange and a store of value, among other uses.
How are they different, then? Here are four simple differences...
#1: No Banks and Governments
Cryptocurrencies eliminate the need for intermediaries. They allow you to store and send money without banking systems. For the 1.7 billion people that don’t have bank accounts, that’s a huge plus. Governments don’t control cryptocurrencies, which means they are borderless and mostly free from regulations.
#2: Faster, Cheaper Transfer of Money
No intermediaries mean faster transactions and cheaper fees, especially with international money transfers. Transfers take minutes instead of days.
#3: Secure and Permanent
All crypto transactions are tamperproof. That is, it is nearly impossible to edit or delete them once they're approved. This makes it very difficult for hackers to steal your money, servers to go down, and banks to reverse transfers.
#4: Public, yet confidential
Transactions can be verified by anyone (even you!) on a public database. And yet, everyone's identities are pseudonymous. You can trust that your transactions “went through” without revealing your identity to anyone.
Hopefully, you’re starting to see why people tout cryptocurrencies as revolutionary.
It’s natural to want to understand how all this is possible. The recipe includes some simple – yet innovative – principles of Computer Science. Using Bitcoin as an example, we’ll stitch these principles together in the next post.