Crypto 101 in 2021
Everyone is reaching out to ask me crypto questions. Let’s cover the basics.
With Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies recently reaching new levels of success and mainstream adoption, I have been getting a lot of messages from friends and family who remember me talking about blockchain in the past. When a friend showed me how Bitcoin mining worked on his gaming computer back in 2011, I was fascinated with the concept of a completely digital currency that no single entity controlled.
Back then mining bitcoin was much easier and its value was considerably lower; it had fewer uses and wasn’t viewed as akin to gold as it is today. Bitcoin was really designed to be more of a peer to peer transaction system, but due to several factors it has become more of a way to save and invest money.
Despite Bitcoin reaching seemingly insane values recently, I still believe we are in the infancy of cryptocurrencies and have yet to see their real potential. While it may seem like Bitcoin is hugely popular, out of the billions of people on Earth, only tens of millions likely own some amount of Bitcoin. This means that a huge number of people are probably not well versed in how cryptocurrencies work, where they came from, and why many people think we need them. I wanted to cover some of these basics in a — hopefully — easy to understand way and try to help newcomers to the crypto…
