To begin with it is necessary to know that Bitcoin was the first “cryptocurrency” created with the main goal of “digitizing and democratizing money” by means of decentralized and anti-fraud (blockchain) technology. After Bitcoin began to emerge new cryptocurrencies which sought the same goal of Bitcoin with their respective technologies and objectives in areas such as money movement, privacy, entertainment, specific technological solutions, etc. Bitcoin is considered to be the most important cryptocurrency today and you should keep in mind that other cryptocurrencies mostly share a vision and goals similar to Bitcoin, but with unique and different small details. If you understand how Bitcoin works, you can understand how other cryptocurrencies work when you start studying them individually.

A cryptocurrency is a purely digital form of money or P2P (peer to peer) currency. Being digital, it's possible to send them anywhere in the world in seconds. And best of all, we can do it without the need for intermediaries like a bank. In addition, like any other currency, you can exchange them for goods and services. Just as we do today with traditional currencies such as the Euro or the Dollar.

So if they look so much like the money we know, why did they create them? Well the short answer is: these digital currencies are definitely a better form of money. In fact, they are the best form of digital money that can exist. The reasons behind this statement are the security, transparency and privacy that allow us to experience. Features we can experience thanks to blockchain technology. And it is that a blockchain is nothing more than a database supported by a decentralized network in its entirety.

But in addition to this, blockchain makes use of advanced asymmetric cryptography. That is, it makes use of the well-known public key and private key. All this in order to create a payment system that allows you to send money with a global, uncensable, secure and immutable reach. This has led to a boom in the development of this technology. A situation that we can see reflected in the thousands of sites that now accept them as a form of payment.