Thinking about the Next Big Cryptocurrency is like thinking about the next big invention in a field that doesn’t yet exist. It doesn’t help to ask, “What will be the next big invention in computing?” There’s no point in asking that until you know what computers are for.
In cryptocurrency, we are still at the early stage of learning. We can see a lot of promise, but the technologies underlying cryptocurrencies and blockchain are itself still developing. They have interesting properties that haven’t been seen anywhere else before and may not be seen anywhere else in our lifetimes. And there is a lot of effort and money being poured into figuring out how they might work together to create new and better things.
Yet it’s easy to get caught up in this speculative frenzy and start betting on things that don’t yet exist.
So here are some things you can do right now:
1) Do research on what crypto actually is – look at bitcoin or ethereum, or something similar (there aren’t many yet). See if you understand it, if there is anything special about it, what it does, why people like it… etc. 2) Learn – read a lot about all the different kinds of crypto out there (the best website for doing so is
There are many different kinds of cryptocurrencies, and each has its own particular strengths. One thing that all good cryptocurrencies have in common is the power of their blockchain . . .
But it’s not what you think. A blockchain is a database that can’t be changed without changing every copy of it. Cryptocurrencies, then, use this property of blockchains as a kind of money: by promising to keep their records unchanged forever, they are able to charge money for the right to keep changing them.
With continuous-transaction technology, the blockchain can also be used to store an increasing amount of information that can’t easily be stored in conventional databases. And this brings us to the next big cryptocurrency trend.
More than anything else, a cryptocurrency has to provide a good user experience. When people use the internet, they want to be able to buy stuff. They want things to be easy. They don’t want to have to keep track of a lot of different currencies, or watch their exchange rates constantly change, or deal with any kind of technical stuff that makes it hard for them to buy things they want.
In other words, in order for a cryptocurrency to get big, it has to be as easy as possible for people to use it.
Cryptocurrencies are a fast-growing and heterodox investment tool. They are not a good way to make money in the short term, since they have no central bank behind them and their price varies wildly. But they have big potential in the long term, as we see from the history of gold or tulip bulbs or most other asset classes.
Cryptocurrencies are like pieces of new tech that don’t exist yet but could in theory be built. Like a new operating system or a new programming language. Cryptocurrencies aren’t a replacement for fiat currencies; they’re an addition to them. You can use them instead of fiat currencies at home, at your business, and when you travel. You can use them as a store of value rather than currency (which is why many people think we should ban bitcoin). And you can use them for transactions without relying on banks (which is one reason bitcoin is such a big deal).
But it’s not just about using the technology to do what the technology does well: it’s about using the technology to do something new. In other words, it’s about creating a new platform for social interaction, one that brings more trust to our economy than existing platforms do.
The word ‘cryptocurrency’ was originally used to describe a form of electronic cash. But it can also be used to describe any new type of virtual currency.
Cryptocurrencies are virtual currencies whose value is not based on the country in which they are issued, or on the strength of the government, like the U.S. dollar, euro, or yen. Instead, cryptocurrencies are based on cryptography and other computer science principles that were developed to protect banking information from theft and fraud by hackers. The most famous cryptocurrency is Bitcoin, but there are hundreds of others.
Cryptocurrencies can be bought and sold like stocks and bonds, but they have no real value outside their communities of users. Unlike real currencies, they cannot be used to pay for goods or services with actual money
The cryptocurrency market is a fast-moving and volatile place. The best way to make money is to develop a strategy that can profit from the ups and downs, and then stick with it. You can’t learn the strategy in one visit; you need to work through it step by step, with lots of small losses along the way.
Cryptocurrencies are not like stocks. They are not interchangeable with shares. In fact, they are not even identical to money. Cryptocurrencies are computer-based digital tokens that run on a decentralised network, without any central authority (like a state or bank). There’s no central ledger for transactions, like there is for fiat currencies like dollars or pounds.
But cryptocurrencies do share some properties with financial instruments like stocks and bonds. For example:
Cryptocurrencies trade on decentralised exchanges
From the beginning of human history, the world has been full of stories about people who found something that no one had noticed before. The earliest stories are about things like gold, which look valuable in our own light but were not much more than a curiosity to a Stone Age tribe.
In their time, the things people found were useful. But eventually they became so important that they became the currency of whole civilizations. And then they ceased to be currency at all, and became part of the culture that remains after all civilization has gone.
The first example of this was probably clay tablets, invented by Sumerians around 4000 BC. Clay tablets came into their own during the Bronze Age (2500 BC-1500 BC) as accounting devices for merchants. They were made out of clay because writing at that time was an unwritten language called cuneiform. There is no evidence that anyone ever read these tablets; they were just used to keep track of debts and other business transactions. But gradually people started using them for other purposes: making lists, keeping diaries, recording court proceedings, and so on. When writing came into general use a couple of centuries later (by 1550 BC), it was written on clay tablets just as it had been before.
Soon after writing came