A cryptocurrency (or crypto currency or crypto asset) is a medium of exchange using cryptography to secure the transactions and to control the creation of new units. Cryptocurrencies are a subset of alternative currencies, or specifically of digital currencies. Bitcoin became the first decentralized cryptocurrency in 2009. Since then, numerous cryptocurrencies have been created. These are frequently called altcoins, as a blend of bitcoin alternative.
Cryptocurrencies use decentralized control as opposed to centralized electronic money/centralized banking systems. The decentralized control is related to the use of bitcoin's block chain transaction database in the role of a distributed ledger.
Overview
Decentralized cryptocurrency is produced by the entire cryptocurrency system collectively, at a rate which is defined when the system is created and which is publicly known. In centralized banking and economic systems such as the Federal Reserve System, corporate boards or governments control the supply of currency by printing units of fiat money or demanding additions to digital banking ledgers. However, companies or governments cannot produce units of cryptocurrency and as such, have not so far provided backing for other firms, banks or corporate entities which hold asset value measured in a decentralized cryptocurrency. The underlying technical system upon which decentralized cryptocurrencies are based was created by the group or individual known as Satoshi Nakamoto.
As of March 2015, hundreds of cryptocurrency specifications exist; most are similar to and derived from the first fully implemented decentralized cryptocurrency, bitcoin. Within cryptocurrency systems the safety, integrity and balance of ledgers is maintained by a community of mutually distrustful parties referred to as miners: members of the general public using their computers to help validate and timestamp transactions adding them to the ledger in accordance with a particular timestamping scheme.
The security of cryptocurrency ledgers is based on the assumption that the majority of miners are honestly trying to maintain the ledger, having financial incentive to do so.
Most cryptocurrencies are designed to gradually decrease production of currency, placing an ultimate cap on the total amount of currency that will ever be in circulation, mimicking precious metals. Compared with ordinary currencies held by financial institutions or kept as cash on hand, cryptocurrencies are less susceptible to seizure by law enforcement. Existing cryptocurrencies are all pseudo-anonymous, though additions such as Zerocoin and its distributed laundry feature have been suggested, which would allow for true anonymity.
History
In 1998, Wei Dai published a description of "b-money", an anonymous, distributed electronic cash system. Shortly thereafter, Nick Szabo created "Bit Gold". Like bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies that would follow it, Bit Gold was an electronic currency system which required users to complete a proof of work function with solutions being cryptographically put together and published. A currency system based on a reusable proof of work was later created Hal Finney who followed the work of Dai and Szabo.
The first decentralized cryptocurrency, bitcoin, was created in 2009 by pseudonymous developer Satoshi Nakamoto. It used SHA-256, a cryptographic hash function, as its proof-of-work scheme. In April 2011, Namecoin was created as an attempt at forming a decentralized DNS, which would make internet censorship very difficult. Soon after, in October 2011, Litecoin was released. It was the first successful cryptocurrency to use scrypt as its hash function instead of SHA-256. Another notable cryptocurrency, Peercoin was the first to use a proof-of-work/proof-of-stake hybrid Many other cryptocurrencies have been created though few have been successful, as they have brought little in the way of technical innovation. On 6 August 2014, the UK announced its Treasury had been commissioned to do a study of cryptocurrencies, and what role, if any, they can play in the UK economy. The study was also to report on whether regulation should be considered.
Starting 2014, a so-called 2nd generation of cryptocurrencies appeared, like Monero, Ethereum and Nxt. They have advanced functionalities like stealth addresses, smart contracts, side chains or assets.
Publicity
Central bank representatives have stated that the adoption of cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin pose a significant challenge to central banks' ability to influence the price of credit for the whole economy. They have also stated that as trade using cryptocurrencies become more popular, there is bound to be a loss of consumer confidence in fiat currencies. Gareth Murphy, a senior central banking officer has stated "widespread use [of cryptocurrency] would also make it more difficult for statistical agencies to gather data on economic activity, which are used by governments to steer the economy". He cautioned that virtual currencies pose a new challenge to central banks' control over the important functions of monetary and exchange rate policy.
Jordan Kelley, founder of Robocoin, launched the first bitcoin ATM in the United States on February 20, 2014. The kiosk installed in Austin, Texas is similar to bank ATMs but has scanners to read government-issued identification such as a driver's license or a passport to confirm users' identities.
The Dogecoin Foundation, a charitable organization centered around Dogecoin and co-founded by Dogecoin co-creator Jackson Palmer, donated more than $30,000 worth of Dogecoin to help fund the Jamaican bobsled team's trip to the 2014 Olympic games in Sochi, Russia. The growing community around Dogecoin is looking to cement its charitable credentials by raising funds to sponsor service dogs for children with special needs.
Legality
The legal status of cryptocurrencies varies substantially from country to country and is still undefined or changing in many of them. While some countries have explicitly allowed their use and trade, others have banned or restricted it. Likewise, various government agencies, departments, and courts have classified bitcoins differently. China Central Bank banned the handling of bitcoins by financial institutions in China during an extremely fast adoption period in early 2014. In Russia, though cryptocurrencies are legal, it is illegal to actually purchase goods with any currency other than the Russian ruble.
On March 25, 2014, the United States Internal Revenue Service (IRS) ruled that bitcoin will be treated as property for tax purposes as opposed to currency. This means bitcoin will be subject to capital gains tax. One benefit of this ruling is that it clarifies the legality of bitcoin. No longer do investors need to worry that investments in or profit made from bitcoins are illegal or how to report them to the IRS. In a paper published by researchers from Oxford and Warwick it was shown that bitcoin has some characteristics similar to the precious metals market more than to traditional currencies, hence in agreement to the IRS decision even if based on different reasons.
Legal issues not dealing with governments have also arisen for cryptocurrencies. Coinye, for example, is an altcoin that used rapper Kanye West as its logo without permission. Upon hearing of the release of Coinye, originally called Coinye West, attorneys for Kanye West sent a cease and desist letter to the email operator of Coinye, David P. McEnery Jr. The letter stated that Coinye was willful trademark infringement, unfair competition, cyberpiracy, and dilution and instructed Coinye to stop using the likeness and name of Kanye West.
Concerns of an unregulated global economy
As the popularity of and demand for online currencies increases since the inception of bitcoin in 2009, so do concerns that such an unregulated person to person global economy that cryptocurrencies offer may become a threat to society. Concerns abound that altcoins may become tools for anonymous web criminals.
Cryptocurrency networks display a marked lack of regulation that attracts many users who seek decentralized exchange and use of currency, however these very same lack of regulations have been critiqued as potentially enabling criminals who seek to evade taxes and launder money.
Transactions that occur through the use and exchange of these altcoins are independent from formal banking systems, and therefore can make tax evasion simpler for individuals. Since charting taxable income is based upon what a recipient reports to the revenue service, it becomes extremely difficult to account for transactions made using existing cryptocurrencies, a mode of exchange that is complex (and in some cases impossible) to track.
Systems of anonymity that most cryptocurrencies offer can also serve as a simpler means to launder money. Rather than laundering money through an intricate net of financial actors and offshore bank accounts, laundering money through altcoins stands outside institutions and can be achieved through anonymous transactions. Laundering services for cryptocurrency exist to service the bitcoin currency, in which multiple sourced bitcoins are blended to obscure the relationship between input and output addresses.
Timestamping
Cryptocurrencies use various timestamping schemes to avoid the need for a trusted third party to timestamp transactions added to the block chain ledger.
Proof-of-work schemes
The first timestamping scheme invented was the proof-of-work scheme. The most widely used proof-of-work schemes are based on SHA-256, which was introduced by bitcoin, and scrypt, which is used by currencies such as Litecoin. The latter now dominates over the world of cryptocurrencies, with at least 480 confirmed implementations.
Some other hashing algorithms that are used for proof-of-work include CryptoNight, Blake, SHA-3, and X11.
Proof-of-stake and combined schemes
Some cryptocurrencies use a combined proof-of-work/proof-of-stake scheme, The Proof-of-stake is a method of securing a cryptocurrency network and achieving distributed consensus through requesting users to show ownership of a certain amount of currency. It is different from proof-of-work systems that run difficult hashing algorithms to validate electronic transactions. The scheme is largely code dependent on the coin, and there's currently no standard form of it.
Economics
Cryptocurrencies are used primarily outside existing banking and governmental institutions, and exchanged over the Internet. While these alternative, decentralized modes of exchange are in the early stages of development, they have the unique potential to challenge existing systems of currency and payments.
Competition in cryptocurrency markets
Today, there are over 200 digital currencies in existence. Entry into the marketplace is undertaken by so many due to the low cost of entry and opportunity for profit making through the creation of coins.
Network effects play an important role in analyzing the development of cryptocurrency markets. Since any given currency gains use value as the number of its users increase, popularity of a certain currency is integral in that currency's success. Economists postulate that large competitors (such as the most popular cryptocurrency: bitcoin) will attract more new users due to the size of their growing exchange pools and as a result will effectively dominate the market.
A study entitled "Competition in the Cryptocurrency Market" conducted by members of the NET Institute over three periods between 2013 and 2014 charts the analysis of changes in price data over time in regards to budding cryptocurrency markets. It analyzes bitcoin and other similar cryptocurrencies referred to as "altcoins". These include Litecoin, Peercoin, and Namecoin; cryptocurrencies listed in order by which account for the largest percentages of digital market capitalization behind bitcoin (which accounts for 90%).
The NET study found that of these four, all were early entrants into the digital currency marketplace, designed to correct perceived bitcoin's flaws and amass popularity in an infant market whose popularity was rapidly growing. This study introduced the question of the role of demand in cryptocurrency markets, and what impetus demand has in relation to emerging coins. The study dealt namely with two common forces of demand that shaped the market: reinforcement and substitution effects. The reinforcement effect expects demand to increase based on usership, and that the cryptocurrency that could gain the most buyers and sellers would win out above all others, thus dominating the marketplace. The substitution effect implies that as the price of bitcoins rose with increased usership, people would begin to look for other options in the cryptocurrency market, thus discouraging any one coin from gaining complete dominance.
List of cryptocurrencies
This is a list of cryptocurrencies. There were more than 669 cryptocurrencies available for trade in online markets as of 24 August 2015 and more than 740 in total[1] but only 9 of them had market capitalizations over $10 million.[2]
| Release | Active | Currency | Symbol | Founder | Hash algorithm | Timestamping | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2014 | Active | Auroracoin | AUR | Baldur Odinsson (pseudonym)[3] | Scrypt | POW | Created as an alternative to fiat currency in Iceland. |
| 2009 | Active | Bitcoin | BTC,[4][5]XBT | Satoshi Nakamoto[nt 1] | SHA-256d[6][7] | POW[7][8] | First decentralized ledger currency. |
| 2014 | Active | BlackCoin | BC, BLK | Rat4 (pseudonym) | Scrypt | Proof-of-stake(POS) | BlackCoin secures its network through a process called minting. |
| 2014 | Inactive | Coinye | KOI, COYE | Scrypt | POW | Used American hip hop artist Kanye West as its mascot, abandoned after trademark lawsuit. | |
| 2014[9] | Active | Dash | DASH | Evan Duffield & Kyle Hagan[10] | X11 | POW & POS[nt 2] | Adds privacy to transactions through a decentralized coin-mixing system called Darksend. |
| 2015 | Active | Decred | DCR | Blake-256 | POW & POS | Created by Bitcoin developers. | |
| 2013 | Active | Dogecoin | DOGE, XDG | Jackson Palmer & Billy Markus[11] | Scrypt[12] | POW | Based on an internet meme. |
| 2014 | Active | DigitalNote | XDN | XDN-dev team, dNote[13] | CryptoNight[14] | POW | DigitalNote (XDN) is a new private cryptocurrency with an instant untraceable crypto messages and first blockchain banking implementation, use CryptoNote protocol. |
| 2015 | Active | Ethereum | ETH | Vitalik Buterin[15] | Dagger Hashimoto[16] | POW | Turing complete smart contracts. |
| 2013[17][18] | Active | Gridcoin | GRC | Scrypt | POW | First cryptocurrency linked to citizen science through the Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing[19][20] | |
| 2011 | Active | Litecoin | LTC | Charles Lee | Scrypt | POW | First cryptocurrency to use Scrypt as a hashing algorithm. |
| 2013 | Active | Mastercoin | MSC | J. R. Willett [21] | SHA-256d[22] | N/A | Mastercoin is both digital currency andcommunications protocol built on top of the existingbitcoin block chain. |
| 2014 | Active | MazaCoin | MZC | BTC Oyate Initiative | SHA-256d | POW | The underlying software for MazaCoin is derived from that of another cryptocurrency, ZetaCoin. |
| 2014 | Active | Monero | XMR | Monero Core Team[23] | CryptoNight[14] | POW | Monero (XMR) is a new privacy-centric coin using the CryptoNote protocol. |
| 2011 | Active | Namecoin | NMC | Vincent Durham[24][25] | SHA-256d | POW | Also acts as an alternative, decentralized DNS. |
| 2013[26][27] | Active | Nxt | NXT | BCNext (pseudonym)[26] | SHA-256d[28] | POS | Nxt is specifically designed as a flexible platform to build applications and financial services around its protocol. |
| 2012[7] | Active | Peercoin | PPC | Sunny King (pseudonym)[29] | SHA-256d[30] | POW & POS | First to use POW and POS functions. |
| 2013[31] | Active | Emercoin | EMC | EvgenijM86 | SHA-256 | POW & POS | Trusted storage for any small data: acts as an alternative, decentralized DNS, PKI store, SSL infrastructure and other. |
| 2014 | Active | PotCoin | POT | Scrypt | POW | Developed to service the legalized cannabis industry | |
| 2013 | Active | Primecoin | XPM | Sunny King (pseudonym)[29] | 1CC/2CC/TWN[32] | POW[32] | Primecoin uses the finding of prime chains composed of Cunningham chains and bi-twin chains for proof-of-work, which can lead to useful byproducts. |
| 2013 | Active | Ripple[33][34][35] | XRP[35] | Chris Larsen & Jed McCaleb[36] | ECDSA[37] | "Consensus" | Based on peer to peer debt transfer. The term Ripple can refer to both the digital currency or the payment network. |
| 2014 | Active | Titcoin | TIT | Edward Mansfield & Richard Allen[38] | SHA-256d | POW | First cryptocurrency to be nominated for a major adult industry award.[39] |
| Proposed to be developed asMoneta | Inactive | Zerocoin | Matthew Green, Ian Miers and Christina Garman | Proposed bitcoin extension to add true cryptographic anonymity |
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