Page 5 - Crypto Beginners Guide

1. What Is Crypto?

To properly start with crypto, let’s first begin with a general introduction to cryptocurrencies.

In this first step of our beginners’ guide, you will learn the basic philosophical backgroundand
general features.

Get the Crypto Spirit Let’s start with the obvious: our world is digitizing. In 2020, up to 60%
of the world’s total population uses the Internet. And that number is still growing.
The democratization of the Internet at the beginning of the 21st century came
with new habits and practices: social sharing, chatting, shopping, playing…
Which is great! Because this is why the Internet has been created: to allow for
peer-to-peer exchange of information, without middlemen or any central authority.
In other words: it was created to decentralize information.

However, as it was initially designed, the Internet does not allow for a decentralized
exchange of value. If you want to share a file or a song with a friend, via WeTransfer
or email for example, you actually send a copy of the file, and keep the original on
your device. But if you send one dollar to a friend while keeping that same dollar,
the dollar loses its value. The only way to exchange money was through intermediaries,
whether they be digital or physical (there you are banks). So the million-dollar question
was: how do we extend decentralization to value sharing? In other words, how to
create a digital currency that would allow peer-to-peer transactions?

The answer came up in 2008 with the birth of Bitcoin, the first ever cryptocurrency.
When its creator Satoshi Nakamoto published the white paper called Bitcoin:
A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System. The title speaks for itself, it explains what
Bitcoin is and how it works. By doing so, it has carved the path for the cryptocurrency
ecosystem and market as the birth of the internet of value.

Understand the It’s difficult not to talk about blockchain when talking about crypto. If not
Possibilities impossible. Put simply, while cryptocurrency is like digital money, blockchain is the
network on which the money transactions operate. Most cryptocurrencies have their
own blockchains with their own rules. Think about Carbonara Pasta. Although there
is an original reference recipe and mandatory ingredients, everyone has their own
way of cooking it. As a result, there are countless variations of Carbonara Pasta,
all gravitating around the same original idea. That’s why you have on one hand
“blockchain technology”: the generic technical concept – like “the Internet”.
And on the other hand several “blockchains” which support the different
cryptocurrencies, such as the “Bitcoin blockchain” or “Ethereum Blockchain”.

While blockchain is the underlying technology, cryptocurrencies are
so far its most common use case. But being into crypto means more than just
making money. It is about taking part in a dynamic technological revolution.

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