What is Cryptocurrency?

A cryptocurrency or cyber currency is a medium of exchange, which can be centralized or decentralized using blockchain technology and cryptography to ensure the validity of transactions and the creation of new currency units. Bitcoin, the first decentralized cryptocurrency, was created in 2009 by a user who used the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto. Since then, many other cryptocurrencies have been created. More recently, there has been a phenomenon of explosion of numerous tokens that have been created based on the Ethereum protocol, mainly after the massive wave of Initial Coin Offers (usually referred to as ICO, from the English Initial Coin Offering) that occurred in 2017.

Unlike centralized banking systems, most cryptocurrencies use a decentralized control system based on blockchain technology, which is a type of distributed ledger operated on a peer-to-peer network. thousands of computers, where everyone has an equal copy of the entire transaction history, preventing a central entity from making changes to the registry or software unilaterally without being excluded from the network.