What is the cryptocurrency market?

Beyond buying a coffee with Bitcoin, beyond finance apps running on Ethereum, beyond oracles and NFTs and blockchain-powered games, there is the cryptocurrency market, an unregulated market to buy, sell, exchange, and store cryptocurrencies.

We will give you a quick tour of the cryptocurrency market and the benefits it offers to investors.

It all begins with Bitcoin

Bitcoin is the first modern cryptocurrency, and it is the ideal example to explore what we mean by 'market'.

Bitcoin was created as a multi-purpose currency to replace or supplement the fiat currencies issued by governments. The idea was that you could go to a clothing store and pay for your purchase with a Bitcoin transfer just as easily as swiping your credit card through the reader. The number of purchases made with old paper money is decreasing, so it makes sense to have a new currency that leverages advancements in computing and networking technology, thus freeing consumers from the limitations of highly regulated government currencies and bank cards.

Cryptocurrency enthusiasts have a brief phrase to describe their dream of the future of digital money: 'buying a coffee with Bitcoin'.

Something funny happened on the way to e-utopia. The online platforms that allowed the purchase of Bitcoin also allowed their coins to be sold to others or exchanged for fiat currencies. It became common for people to buy Bitcoin with dollars or euros, wait for the value of Bitcoin to rise, and then sell their coins, converting them back to fiat currency and pocketing the profits.

In addition to fulfilling its primary purpose as a digital currency, Bitcoin was now an investment.

Now multiply by several thousand.

Thousands of cryptocurrencies have been launched since Bitcoin's debut in 2009, each with a primary purpose.