What is a cryptocurrency?

In the simplest terms, you can think of cryptocurrencies as digital money on an internet-based exchange. They’re built on a type of technology called blockchain. In the context of cryptocurrency, think of blockchain as a massive list that shows every transaction for a specific cryptocurrency (e.g. Bitcoin) since the beginning of crypto-time. It can’t be tampered with, and all transactions are recorded on it are public so anyone can see them.

Each transaction is a block, and before it gets added to the chain it needs to undergo some complex math to ensure it’s valid by nodes (i.e. fast computers). The act of verifying is also known as mining. The chain is all the approved transactions (or blocks) which can be traced back to the Genesis block, (aka the first-ever transaction).

You can learn more about cryptocurrencies here!