Three Things You Wondered about Cryptocurrency but were Afraid to Ask

Crypto basics for beginners… from another beginner.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, I’m sure you will have heard of cryptocurrency, but to a lot of us it seems rather a strange and mysterious concept, the province of Millennials and Silicon Valley types, rather than an everyday reality. Until about six months ago I would have said the same of myself. I am still far from being an expert, but I have more of a clue than I used to, so here I am going to do my best to make crypto seem less mysterious and more accessible because, like it or not, cryptocurrency is coming, and is going to be a significant part of our futures (a bit like that darned “internet” thingie that once seemed so avant garde…).

If you’re wondering why you would even care to find out more, there are many possible reasons, but the one that appeals to me the most is this: in our mainstream economy, we have created a system that works well for some (the wealthiest top few %) and not so well for everybody else. But money is just a man-made device (with the emphasis on “man” — as the chief designers of our modern economy were mostly male) for exchanging value. Cryptocurrencies are also a device for exchanging value, and because they are not owned by a government, they have greater liberty to tweak the rules of the game — for example…