You can't see it, touch it, or feel it, yet it can change people's lives. Only time will tell whether this is a blessing from technological advancement or an external force that may mess with our finances.
As defined by Chris Rose in his paper on "The Evolution Of Digital Currencies Bitcoin, A Cryptocurrency Causing A Monetary Revolution" in International Business & Economics Research Journal. Digital currency is a form of virtual currency that is electronically created by a large set of codes. It is unregulated and typically under the authority of its developers. Members of particular community use and accept it. The most well-known type of digital currency that has revolutionized the world is a cryptocurrency, which is stored and exchanged using blockchain technology. We employ cryptography for security via a network of computers linked to the leading blockchain network, making the digital currency exceedingly challenging to counterfeit.
Though the first digital money was defined in 1989, the world of cryptocurrencies began in 2008, when Satoshi Nakamoto released the white paper Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System under the alias Satoshi Nakamoto. It was the first time the concept of blockchain was exposed to the rest of the world. Bitcoin became a popular buzzword, and people began to recognize it as a genuine means of trade and began exchanging it for dollars. It has demonstrated the ability to create significant competition for traditional money. But, like any other mode, it had drawbacks. It was vulnerable to hackers, and the most significant breach occurred in 2014 when bitcoin was flying higher and higher in the market, when a group of hackers stole $460 million in bitcoins from a bitcoin exchange in February 2014. However, the cryptocurrency rebounded quickly from this shock, and several other types of cryptocurrencies were established offering even more sophisticated protection. For example, the Ethereum platform, where ether, a cryptocurrency, is exchanged.
The sole idea of cryptocurrencies was to emerge as a new form of currency in which it was developed and managed by people, with equal authority distributed to all. However, the extreme speculations and how it is viewed have placed it in the category of a property rather than a medium. Every second, its dependability is placed into doubt, as consumers do not want to deal with a currency whose value might be double one day and plunge to half the next. Therefore, it is doubtful that it will rise to become a viable alternative to traditional money. However, with its sense of security and worth, it may become one of the most popular forms of currency in this era when the world has gone digital.
