Concept of digital cryptocurrency
virtual currencies are generally at the bottom, and many of them are pyramid schemes or funds
in fact, cryptocurrency, virtual currency and digital currency are the same, but they are called differently
at present, the mainstream digital currencies in the market include bitcoin, bitcoin cash, wikilink and so on.
bitcoin (BTC)
issue date: 2009
market value: US $163 billion
advantage: as the first cryptocurrency issued, bitcoin is the world's largest and most popular blockchain network and the most experienced cryptocurrency that can resist hacker attacks
disadvantage: the increasing demand brings great pressure to bitcoin network, which makes the transaction cost high. The system can only process about seven transactions per second, but its power consumption is amazing. This is mainly e to its workload proof mechanism and consensus principle, which makes mining become a labor-intensive activity
eth
release date: 2015
market value: US $70 billion
advantage: its built-in programming language allows developers to write their own smart contract computer programs running on the blockchain. So far, most of the first token sales are based on Ethereum's smart contracts
Disadvantages: Ethereum also uses the consistency protocol of workload proof, so it is relatively slow and consumes a lot of power. Many early smart contracts are vulnerable to hacker attacks, and the development of smart contract security is still immatureXRP
issue time: 2012
market value: US $32 billion
advantage: XRP claims that its XRP cryptocurrency can become the "bridge currency" of major financial institutions, and can settle cross-border payments more quickly and at lower cost. Ruibo uses a new consistency protocol, which can achieve faster transactions, faster than t-coin and Ethereum
disadvantages: as a private company, Ruibo has important control over the system, some people think that XRP is not decentralized enough, which is in contrast to bitcoin, which anyone can mine
bitcoin cash (BCH)
issue time: 2017
market value: US $19 billion
advantage: this kind of currency is a "hard fork" of bitcoin, and its founder has adjusted compared with bitcoin, so that it can handle a larger transaction volume
disadvantage: critics say bitcoin cash is too centralized - a few miners create most of the money
lightcoin (LTC)
time of issue: 2011
market value: US $10 billion
advantage: lightcoin is a kind of "alternative currency" - almost a clone of bitcoin, but there are still several differences. Lightcoin processes transactions four times faster than bitcoin, and the mining process remains open to amateurs - very different from bitcoin, because bitcoin's professional miners use expensive hardware
disadvantages: although it is faster than bitcoin, lightcoin is still too slow and consumes a lot of power. These factors make it unable to become an ideal payment method, and there is another disadvantage: it is not very famous
recommend an article: brief introction of the top 100 currencies in the market value ranking of digital currency. This article summarizes the brief introction of the top 100 currencies in the market value ranking (according to the market value ranking of coinmarket cap on July 30, 2018), hoping to be helpful to friends who have just entered the currency circle
in the past, we used precious metals as currency. Because precious metal proction is not high, the speed of new money increase is limited, and the economy is growing, the market needs more money to let the goods flow as much as possible. There is value when there is demand. In this sense, the value of precious metals in making other things is secondary. The economy needs money to circulate goods, and this demand is the main one. However, if the proction of precious metals is limited, and the precious metal currencies in circulation will withdraw from the market for various reasons, then even the newly made precious metal currencies have the same or even higher value
why does bitcoin keep its value? BTC (short for bitcoin) exists in a huge P2P network. Bitcoin group has recognized an algorithm. Under current conditions, only about 6 new BTCs will be generated per hour. At present, there are 50 new BTCs in each group. That is to say, in this world, only about 300 BTCs are generated per hour. This output will also be limited by the difficulty automatically adjusted by the network. You can't speed up money proction by modifying everyone's client algorithm and parameters (client is open source). Counterfeit currency will be discarded by the network (unless you can control most of the network nodes)
what is the value of BTC itself
the value of BTC is the trading channel itself. A new set of BTCs provides a mathematical guarantee to transfer old BTCs from one account to another. The price behind this security guarantee is a lot of computing power. It takes a lot of energy to proce such a safe passage, so the whole BTC user group will reward the mint (currently 50 BTC), which will become 25 BTC after December 2012, and it will be halved every four years
to put it simply, my understanding is that all BTCs in the world are generated by the energy of running computers. Their total value (up to now, there are about 12W groups of BTCs proced, 50 in each group, and the market price is about US $7.3), should be less than the total market value of consumed energy. However, I think most of the energy used to proce BTC is wasted resources< br />4