Cryptocurrency:
Bitcoin & Altcoins
hrebinenko 41 E-CH
PLAN
•GENERAL INFORMATION
•HISTORY
•ALTCOINS
•BITCOIN
•ARCHITECTURE
•SUMMARY
•REFERENCES
GENERAL INFORMATION
A cryptocurrency is a digital or virtual currency that is secured by cryptography, which makes it nearly impossible to counterfeit or double-spend.
Many cryptocurrencies are decentralized networks based on blockchain technology—a distributed ledger enforced by a disparate network of computers.
HISTORY
In 1983, the American cryptographer David Chaum conceived an anonymous cryptographic electronic money called ecash
Later, in 1995, he implemented it through Digicash, [8] an early form of cryptographic electronic payments which required user software in order to withdraw notes from a bank and designate specific encrypted keys before it can be sent to a recipient.
In 1996, the National Security Agency published a paper entitled How to Make a Mint: the Cryptography of Anonymous Electronic Cash, describing a Cryptocurrency system
HISTORY
The first decentralized cryptocurrency, bitcoin, was created in 2009 by presumably pseudonymous developer Satoshi Nakamoto.
In April 2011, Namecoin was created as an attempt at forming a decentralized DNS, which would make internet censorship very difficult.
ALTCOIN
Altcoins often have underlying differences with bitcoin.
Litecoin aims to process a block every 2.5 minutes, rather than bitcoin's 10 minutes which allows Litecoin to confirm transactions faster than bitcoin
Another example is Ethereum, which has smart contract functionality that allows decentralized applications to be run on its blockchain
Ethereum is the most-actively used blockchain in the world according to Bloomberg News and has the largest "following" of any altcoins according to the New York Times
ALTCOINS
There are over 900 Altcoin currencies that have been created since Bitcoin
Examples of Altcoins: Litebit,
BTCdirect, Kraken, Bittrex
BITCOIN
Bitcoin is a decentralized digital currency, without a central bank or single administrator, that can be sent from user to user on the peer- to-peer bitcoin network without the need for intermediaries
Bitcoins are created as a reward for a process known as mining.
They can be exchanged for other currencies, products, and services
BITCOIN
Bitcoin has been criticized for its use in illegal transactions, the large amount of electricity used by miners, price volatility, and thefts from exchanges.
Some economists have characterized it as a speculative bubble at various times.
Bitcoin has also been used as an investment, although several regulatory agencies have issued investor alerts about bitcoin
BITCOIN MINING
Mining is a record-keeping service done through the use of computer processing power.
Miners keep the blockchain consistent, complete, and unalterable by repeatedly grouping newly broadcast transactions into a block, which is then broadcast to the network and verified by recipient nodes
Each block contains a SHA-256 cryptographic hash of the previous block, thus linking it to the previous block and giving the blockchain its name