The world of cryptocurrency is constantly evolving and changing in different directions. Crypto has risen in popularity over the years, which has made room for many new and innovative ways to both use and invest in crypto.
These many developments mean that there’s already a short history of crypto for us to look back at. While a clear distinction between past, present and future can’t be made, we can look back at what started it all – and look forward and speculate what the next big thing in crypto will be. Come along for the ride below.
The Past: Trading
Cryptocurrencies originated back in 2009 with Bitcoin as a peer-to-peer currency that wasn’t controlled by governments or banks. The early currencies marked the start of this new adventure and made many previously unheard of things possible. Crypto usually runs on the Blockchain, which also secures the transactions between users.
Cryptocurrencies were simple to invest in, and in the beginning, it was merely a gimmick for many. Now, the currencies are enormous, and many are making large amounts of money by trading crypto. Right from the get-go, Bitcoin has been the most known and the biggest currency – and still is today, with a market cap over $846 billion. There are currently over 12,000 cryptocurrencies, and the number keeps growing. You can find the top 10 currencies here.
The Present: NFTs
NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, are all the rage in the crypto world at the moment. These digital pieces are traded between users much like crypto, but in their case, the focus is on the originality of the piece. Unlike crypto such as Bitcoin, an NFT is unique. If you have one bitcoin, you can trade it for another bitcoin, and it doesn’t make much of a difference. This is not the case with NFTs: They each have their own unique value.
The value of an NFT is based on what a buyer is willing to pay for the piece. This can also make NFTs worthless very quickly. Meme culture has given NFTs a huge boost and made them sought after: New designs take culturally popular things, such as cute animals, and make them into digital art and NFTs. An example of this is Alpacadabraz, which depicts universally loved alpacas and is sold at https://buynft.com/collections/alpacadabraz/. The prices for these NFTs started af just 0.069 ETH each and, at the time of writing, had already risen to more than 1.2 ETH. This goes to show just how much NFTs fluctuate and how high the demand for them is.
The Future: Crypto Futures
Now, let’s attempt to look into the future of crypto. The newest addition to the crypto family is Crypto Futures. This new feature allows you to get into crypto without investing in it yourself. That’s right, it’s now possible to bet on the future prices of cryptocurrencies. This is, in short, called Crypto Futures.
Because you don’t have to actually buy any crypto or trade yourself, Crypto Futures is a safer way for beginners to get into crypto. The way the platforms are built also makes it safer, as it can’t be hacked or stolen. This way, you can test your knowledge about crypto and the accuracy of your predictions – without running the bigger risk of actually investing.
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