A Brief Overview of the Crypto Revolution

Surely you have heard of cryptocurrencies? Over the past few years different coins have been propelled into the mainstream and they have become impossible to ignore. What seemed like just a fad a few years ago has become almost central to how we buy certain goods, and it looks to be something many of us will need to get used to.

This recent crypto boom and its impact online can be observed all over the digital space and in this guide we will be giving you a history of crypto and where we think it will go next.

What is Crypto?

Crypto is used synonymously with cryptocurrency and is used to buy and sell goods and services, as well as being traded as commodities like stocks and shares. What makes crypto unique is that it has little or no real world equivalent and so is often largely untraceable and so is useful for people who look to live off the grid and in a way that is largely minimal.

The recent boom in crypto trading has resulted in many companies releasing their own coins, or tokens, that can be used exclusively to buy products from their respective stores. Whether these company-specific coins have any future is yet to be determined, but this interest in virtual currencies seems to be here to stay, despite many not being fully clued in yet.

A simplified way of describing how these crypto coins work is that they work in tandem with a program called the blockchain, which works as a virtual ledger that keeps track of all crypto transactions and is actively maintained by the participants. This constant maintenance helps make it amazingly secure and almost impossible to break into.

The history of Crypto

You might have seen the stories in the news about early crypto investors who bought a tonne of penny tokens almost as a joke only to find their old memory stick a decade later and find that their tiny investment has swelled into many millions of dollars without them even noticing. Now might be the perfect time to rack your brain for any you might have bought.

A decade ago, it was not uncommon for those early crypto investors to send each other thousands of tokens, usually Bitcoin at the time, in order to pay for a product or service. Today, that same transaction would likely be worth many tens of millions of dollars and this highlights better than anything else, how much the price of tokens has exploded this decade.

What was also common way back then was the same select coins were the ones that most early users traded with. A decade ago there weren't anywhere near as many tokens for users to buy and sell, meaning that much of the limited wealth, at the time, was shared between a relatively small number of tokens - unlike the 14,500 tokens traded today.

How does Crypto work?

The aspect of crypto that most regular people like us often find to be the most confusing is the fact that the system maintains itself thanks to the almost constant mining and data sharing that users do on their devices. This technology is very new in technological terms and so the fact that it works out well has surprised many, especially traditional traders.

The blockchain stores all and any data exchanges on the trading network, and so works as a sort of ledger like we see in banks and accountancy offices. These data exchanges are called transactions in the community, and each and every one of them is tracked and stored in the network, before being verified by those also working to maintain the blockchain.

You can access your data and retrieve your coins by using a key that is unique only to you and you'd better make sure not to lose your key because you cannot access your tokens any other way. These days some of these keys are worth more than gold and diamonds, making them something that many burglars are keen to keep an eye out for.

Is Crypto a good investment?

Many people see the volatility of cryptocurrencies as a good thing because it provides a real chance for somebody to get rich quickly by doing very little in terms of actual work. Seeing your token shoot up in price thanks to a celebrity shoutout can feel very much like winning the lottery because it really can happen out of the blue. 

That being said, cryptocurrencies are also seen as a high-risk investment because they often fluctuate without any real reason. Most real-world currencies fluctuate in price because of actual observable events but with cryptocurrencies, you can see them explode in value just because a prominent celebrity tweets about something vaguely related to it.

In order to invest smartly, you should observe the previous performance of the token and look for patterns - it would be silly to put a majority investment into a coin that regularly dips up and down without there being any stability. The smart thing to do would be to invest in a coin that has enjoyed steady but sustained growth over the past few years without any major fluctuations.

Many people see the volatility of cryptocurrencies as a good thing because it provides a real chance for somebody to get rich quickly by doing very little in terms of actual work. Seeing your token shoot up in price thanks to a celebrity shoutout can feel very much like winning the lottery because it really can happen out of the blue. 

That being said, cryptocurrencies are also seen as a high-risk investment because they often fluctuate without any real reason. Most real-world currencies fluctuate in price because of actual observable events but with cryptocurrencies, you can see them explode in value just because a prominent celebrity tweets about something vaguely related to it.

In order to invest smartly, you should observe the previous performance of the token and look for patterns - it would be silly to put a majority investment into a coin that regularly dips up and down without there being any stability. The smart thing to do would be to invest in a coin that has enjoyed steady but sustained growth over the past few years without any major fluctuations.

The future of Crypto

The future of crypto is so hard to predict mainly because a decade ago we would never have guessed that things would have escalated as much as they already have. The volatile nature of many of these coins makes it almost impossible to make a prediction that will age well when looking back in another 10 years. In short: It is hard to make a good guess.

As a result of the industry being relatively new in the grand scheme of things, there is still a constant influx of new technologies that are improving the way we mine and trade tokens, as well as there being more and more ways for us to spend our much-coveted coins. 

That being said, this wealth of opportunity does hint at there being further growth with regards to where and when we will be allowed to spend our tokens. Many hardliners do however point to these new ways to spend as being dangerous, as they take away from people being able to hold onto their coins and then selling them in the future for much larger returns.

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