The Story of Cryptocurrency
In the 1990s, lots of different people tried to build cryptocurrencies. The ones that came closest were DigiCash, HashCash and B-money. None of them got the technology quite right or the support they needed to succeed.
The story of cryptocurrency really gets started with Bitcoin. Bitcoin was the world’s first real cryptocurrency, and is still the most famous. Bitcoin’s creator is called Satoshi Nakamoto, but no-one knows who that is! No-one has ever met Satoshi in person. They could be a man, a woman or a whole group of people!
On January 12, 2009, Satoshi’s Bitcoin blockchain went online. The first trade of Bitcoin was for 10 BTC (Bitcoins). Satoshi sent it to a coder called Hal Finney.
Satoshi only ever spoke on internet message boards and in emails. By April 2011, Satoshi was gone. All that’s left of Satoshi Nakamoto is Bitcoin — and the name.
What is a cryptocurrency: Bitcoin cryptocurrency front page.
It took a couple of years for people to become interested in Bitcoin. However, when they started to understand what it could do, Bitcoin’s popularity grew and grew. People saw that Bitcoin had all six of those things we listed earlier, and they started buying it and using it.
So, what is a cryptocurrency like Bitcoin used for? Well… let’s talk about one of the websites where people first started using Bitcoin — which helped to make it famous!
Silk Road
Silk Road was an online black market. It was like an illegal Amazon or eBay. It used Bitcoin as its main trading currency. Customers could buy all sorts of things, using Bitcoin, without anyone knowing who they were. Many of these things were illegal, things like drugs, stolen goods, and weapons. Silk Road even had adverts for assassins!
Silk Road was shut down in 2013, after two years of trading. America’s FBI seized millions of dollars’ worth of Bitcoins, making it a very unlikely member of the cryptocurrency community!
The Silk Road story made it into newspapers across the world. This was both good and bad for Bitcoin. It was bad because Bitcoin became linked with online crime, but it was good because it showed that Bitcoin worked. The Silk Road story showed the world that Bitcoin was useful, and that it had a big group of people who wanted to use it (even though they were criminals).
Compare Crypto Exchanges Side by Side With Others
Did you know?
Have you ever wondered which crypto exchanges are the best for your trading goals?
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What Happened Next?
When it went live in 2009, Bitcoin was worth zero dollars and zero cents. In April 2011, you could get 1 Bitcoin for $1. On December 17, 2017, Bitcoin had its best day so far. You could trade 1BTC for $20,052! Today, on August 7, 2021, you can trade 1BTC for $11,822. Not bad, right?
Cryptocurrency trading has become very popular. Hundreds of other cryptocurrencies have followed Bitcoin into the market, they are called altcoins.
Like Bitcoin, altcoins use blockchain technology, but they try to do things a little differently. Let’s have a look at the best of the rest;
Litecoin is very similar to Bitcoin, but its system makes mining easier for users who don’t have powerful computers.
Dogecoin is a fun-based altcoin with a Shiba Inu dog as its mascot. Fans of dogecoin often use it to support good causes, like wells in Kenya and the Jamaican Bobsled Team!
BitcoinCash was created when a group of Bitcoin users disagreed with some of Bitcoin’s rules and broke away to form their own digital currency in 2017. A big disagreement like this is known as a hard fork.
Note: You can imagine a hard fork in a similar way to how a mobile phone update works. Some people choose to upgrade their phones, whereas some people don’t. It is still the same phone, however, it has different features.
Not everyone who uses blockchain technology is trying to create cryptocurrencies. Some people are trying to build blockchains that are bigger, better, and can do more. The most well-known example of this is Ethereum.
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