Meanwhile, in another corner of the world, James Howells, like a hero from a fairy tale, finds himself in a dark room where his old disk lies, from which 7,500 bitcoins suddenly shine like treasure in the valley of dragons. But, unfortunately, the key to the treasury was lost, and the disk is now hidden deep underground, under a layer of time and oblivion. These two stories, like little sand stars on the ocean shore, reflect the grand journeys and vicissitudes of the world of cryptocurrencies, where every step can be a magical or dark turn on the path to wealth and adventure.
These are just two of the many stories played out in the cryptocurrency theater. Some students turn their study days into journeys to make millions, others get lost in the maze of the pursuit of quick money, and some simply lose the keys to their treasure troves and are unable to unlock the doors to their wealth. Cryptocurrencies are not only financial instruments, but also plots for exciting stories about adventures, discoveries and losses that make our world more mysterious and fascinating.
This is what New York looked like in September 2008: one after another, people in expensive suits with boxes in their hands come out of a building in the center of Manhattan. These people were fired from the world’s largest bank, L Brothers, and so far no one knows that these layoffs will begin the deepest economic crisis on the planet since the Great Depression. A decline in production, an increase in unemployment, the disappearance of easy loans – all these signs indicate that a collapse may hit us too. Almost no one thought that more than 2 million people in the United States alone would lose their jobs. The crisis will spread to other countries that are closely linked to the American economy, and pension funds around the world will lose trillions of dollars.
Imagine a world where money is not printed by the state, but is masterfully forged by participants in a new game called blockchain. In 2008, an anonymous person under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto challenged established rules by releasing his creation into the world – Bitcoin, a digital currency in which there is no place for banking dependence or government control. This is something incredible, where every operation is a small masterpiece of cryptography, captured in the blockchain.
Let’s see how it works: one participant transfers 10 coins to another, and after a while he returns five coins to him. But there is no room for fraud or oblivion, because each operation is encrypted and inextricably linked to previous blocks. It’s like a game of ciphers where one mistake destroys the entire maze.
Each block in the blockchain is not just a record, but a quest where to create a new block you need to find the correct hash, consisting of a thousand characters. Miners are unusual treasure hunters who solve complex computational problems to discover that hash and earn their Bitcoin. And the more difficult the task, the greater the delight and reward, just like in the most exciting game. This is how digital currency appeared, which became a symbol of the financial revolution and a new era of independence. On January 3, 2009, Satoshi Nakamoto wrote his name into history by creating the first block in the Bitcoin blockchain. In this block, as in the mysterious letter of time, there were no financial transactions. Instead, it contained just one phrase that caught the world’s attention: “The Chancellor is on the brink of a second bank bailout.” This phrase, which became the headline of the British newspaper Times, reflected the deep financial crisis that gripped the world.
A few days later, on January 12, Satoshi made the first real transaction in block 170, sending 10 bitcoins to programmer Hal Finney. With each new block, more and more people learned about Bitcoin, joined the process and became part of this revolutionary technology. It’s hard to believe, but in the early days Bitcoin was worth less than one cent and was used more as an experimental technology than as a medium of exchange. However, with the passage of time and the spread of knowledge about it, Bitcoin began to gain increasing fame and value, turning from an experiment into a revolution in the world of finance.
Bitcoin is a unique form of digital wealth where ownership is entirely yours. No banks or intermediaries are required to transfer it. All you need to do is know the recipient’s wallet address, and you can carry out the transaction
shares directly. It is important to remember that the only way to lose your funds is to reveal the key to your wallet to scammers.
Bitcoin is also unique in that it has strict mining rules. Only 21 million coins will be created, and every 210,000 blocks the reward for finding the hash of a new block is halved. This means that if in 2009 a miner received 50 bitcoins per block, today this number has decreased to just over three. Despite the decrease in rewards, the number of miners is growing, and huge farms covering thousands of square meters are now used to mine Bitcoin. This competition does not have a significant impact on the mining speed, and it is thanks to this mechanism that Bitcoin has become known as “digital gold.”
Unlike fiat money, which is subject to inflation due to the constant printing of new ones, Bitcoin does not depreciate in value. This makes it attractive to many because it provides a stable and reliable medium of exchange rather than just paper bills in a wallet.
People sincerely believed that the new blockchain technology and Bitcoin in particular would give them complete control over their own finances. With each new miner, Bitcoin gained more trust. However, its limited throughput – just seven transactions per second, while Visa’s was 24,000 per second – became a bottleneck. This slowness, although it ensured the stability of Bitcoin, prevented its mass use.
As blockchain became understood and widespread, thousands of programmers began looking for ways to improve Bitcoin. In 2011, a former Google employee created a cryptocurrency that was eight times faster, easier to mine, and cheaper to transact – it was Litecoin, the digital silver-to-digital gold equivalent of Bitcoin.
However, Litecoin was not the only alternative. In 2012, the Ripple cryptocurrency appeared, which was capable of transferring customer money in a few seconds and almost free of charge, which was a difference from the traditional Swift bank transfer system. Every year more and more new coins and projects appeared, offering various solutions and improvements in the world of cryptocurrencies. Vitalik Buterin truly revolutionized the world of cryptocurrencies. He asked himself: What if we took advantage of the new technology offered by Bitcoin and solved one of the key problems of the economy – the problem of trust? In 2015, he launched the Ethereum project, which proposed the concept of smart contracts. Here’s how they work:
Imagine you want to buy an apartment. To protect yourself, you go to the bank and open a letter of credit. You deposit money into this account, which the seller will receive only after signing the purchase and sale agreement. The whole process is controlled by the bank, which takes a commission for this. The Ethereum smart contract removes the bank from this transaction. The system itself checks the terms of the contract and, if they are fulfilled, automatically transfers money from your wallet to the seller’s wallet. This happens quickly, cheaply and reliably, without intermediaries and unnecessary commissions. Ethereum has really made it easier to create your own cryptocurrencies. Previously, you had to develop your own blockchain to do this, but now thanks to Ethereum it has become much easier. Ethereum can be called the programming language of the cryptocurrency world because it allows you to create new coins and tokens easily and quickly.
As a result of the emergence of Ethereum in 2017, a massive phenomenon occurred – ICO (Initial Coin Offering), when startups issued their coins and tokens to raise capital. This allowed any startup to attract funding without special restrictions and control from the state. The crypto industry began to resemble the golden era of the Internet in the late 90s, when everyone understood that the future belonged to the Internet, and Internet companies grew quickly, like mushrooms after rain.
The essence of the ICO is that startups come up with their own project, issue a coin for this project and promise investors a huge increase in the price of this coin (for example, by 1000%). They then raise funds by selling their coins to investors. Indeed, cryptocurrencies and blockchain technologies create two parallel worlds. One world is public money, which is backed and controlled by the government. Another world is private money, which operates on the basis of agreements and technologies between system participants, providing a greater degree of autonomy.
Governments find themselves in a difficult situation trying to straddle both sides of the aisle. They do not ban cryptocurrencies, seeing the potential for the future in blockchain technology, but at the same time do not recognize them as official money, since this threatens the foundations of the state economy. Many countries have begun to develop their own national blockchain-based cryptocurrencies, known as central bank digital currencies. Such currencies promise higher levels of transparency and security, since every transaction can be tracked, and smart contracts provide more reliable funds transfers.
This process leads to increased government control over financial transactions, but also provides citizens with more convenience and protection. Decentralization, which was originally one of the main features of cryptocurrencies, is now becoming a tool for government regulation.
My point is that cryptocurrency is not just a niche means of payment or a risky investment. It represents a new form of financial relations, which is already being actively introduced into everyday life. We are witnessing a historic shift in the financial sector, where digital money is becoming an integral part of our daily lives, just as the Internet became an integral part of our lives in the past.
