Culture

Technological innovations are also affecting the culture of every society. One of the latest technological innovations is the cryptocurrency. Cryptocurrencies have emerged as the global phenomena for people all across the world.

Understand the real nature and working of these currencies

Cryptocurrency is a blockchain based virtual or digital currency that is being used as a medium of exchange nowadays. All the transactions are stored cryptographically on a distributed ledger. The extremely secure transactions have made it one of the widely used payment platforms across the world. It does not involve any third party and is a lot cost effective.

Bitcoin was the first cryptocurrency that was launched in 2009. The increasing value of this currency over the years has attracted a lot of investors and businesses to involve in it. Nowadays, there are more than 1384 cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ripple, and Litecoin are some of the top digital currencies.

Cryptocurrencies are based on blockchain technology. The blockchain is a distributed ledger to record all the digital transactions taking place in the world of cryptocurrencies. Each transaction is stored in a separate block and is linked with the previous block. The security, reliability, cost-effectiveness, and speed are some of the features of blockchain technology.

Cryptocurrencies have seen a boom in 2017, and the values of top three cryptocurrencies touched an all-time high. In the last week of December, Bitcoin touched an almost $20000 value with Ethereum and ripple at its heels. Due to the increasing values of these currencies, many countries are devising laws to regulate these. China is the first country to ban the trading in crypto exchanges.

Last week, South Korea regulators have also announced to ban the cryptocurrency trading. This is because the transactions in this form of payment are direct and no third party is involved. This causes a lot of tax evasion. Many of the crypto experts are of the view that the secure transactions may also cause money laundering across the world. Thus, all the countries are imposing bans on these currencies, and the results are the decreasing values of these.

Here, one thing worth mentioning is that use of blockchain in these currencies is making these currencies a secure platform to transfer payments across the globe. This is why many of the money transfer firms are planning to adopt any of these currencies to facilitate the people for cross-border payments. The cross-border transactions in this payment platform take seconds to complete. Moreover, the independent transactions without any third party also make these cost-effective for payment processing.