By SIMON CONSTABLE
Financial innovations often get overheated. Frequently there seems to be a mania, then a crash, which is followed first by state prosecutions and then acceptance of a new way of doing things. And, true to form, it has happened again seemingly in the form of cryptocurrency, which has fast become a cause célèbre.
Cryptocurrency began in January 2009 with the invention of Bitcoin; it built on the related blockchain technology introduced in 1991. One innovation was that the historical blockchain coding couldn’t be retrospectively altered. It was like a ledger where the prior entries could not be changed. Another distinctive characteristic was there would only ever be a fixed number of Bitcoins available. Once they’d all been discovered, or mined, there could be no more. This differentiated cryptocurrency from dollars, which get devalued as more and more bills get printed. For more than a few people, these two attributes were enough to embrace Bitcoin and blockchain. Read more here.
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