A cryptocurrency (or crypto currency) is a digital asset designed to work as a medium of exchange wherein individual coin ownership records are stored in a ledger existing in a form of computerized databaseusing strong cryptocurrency to secure transaction records, to control the creation of additional coins, and to verify the transfer of coin ownership.
Bitcoin was first released as open-source software in 2009, is the first decentralized cryptocurrency. Since the release of bitcoin, over 6,000 altcoins (alternative variants of bitcoin, or other cryptocurrencies) have been created.
According to Jan Lansky, a cryptocurrency is a system that meets six conditions:
- The system does not require a central authority, its state is maintained through distributed consensus.
- The system keeps an overview of cryptocurrency units and their ownership.
- The system defines whether new cryptocurrency units can be created. If new cryptocurrency units can be created, the system defines the circumstances of their origin and how to determine the ownership of these new units.
- Ownership of cryptocurrency units can be proved exclusively cryptographically.
- The system allows transactions to be performed in which ownership of the cryptographic units is changed. A transaction statement can only be issued by an entity proving the current ownership of these units.
- If two different instructions for changing the ownership of the same cryptographic units are simultaneously entered, the system performs at most one of them.
Cryptocurrencies are used primarily outside existing banking and governmental institutions and are exchanged over the Internet.
All crypto activity, including investment and trading, will soon be legal in the country. The move has been widely welcomed by crypto-investors and traders and is a major win for the entire cryptocurrency community in India and the global cryptocurrency community.
It is a huge achievement for the crypto-industry that it has just fought and won the support of the central bank in the world's second-most populous country. The country is the world's second-largest economy, with India considered Asia's largest market for bitcoin and other digital currencies.
