The cryptocurrency ecosystem is getting immense momentum with each passing day and year. It is, rather, doing silent encroachment on the traditional finance’s territory.
Within the past few years, Bitcoin transactions and users have reached an average growth rate of around 60% each year. Likewise, public and private investors have shown their deepest commitment to virtual currencies or cryptocurrencies including Ripple (XRP), Ethereum, and Stellar—and several others throughout the industry.
The evolution of cryptocurrency
Today there is more than a $200 billion industry of cryptocurrency all over the world.
Virtual currency has actually disrupted and impacted the entire world in many areas.
However, the origin of the digital currency is not the recent one, rather it has an enriched history of innovation, which dates back to the 1980s when the field of cryptography was revolutionized and advanced to bring into shelves the avant-garde technology that helps in creating encryption techniques designed to protect the network.
Since cryptography, a series of major events have taken place to shape the landscape.
A few of the most important events are:
| Year | Event |
| 2009 | Satoshi Nakamoto mined the first Bitcoin on a decentralized network |
| 2011 | Litecoin was launched |
| 2012 | Ripple was founded |
| 2013 | It is the year when the price of a single Bitcoin went up to $1,000 |
| 2015 | Ethereum was launched and introduced smart contracts into the crypto ecosystem |
| 2017 | More than 1,000 cryptocurrencies were listed |
| 2017 | It was the year when Bitcoin’s price rocketed past $10,000, and reached a peak just shy of $20,000 |
| 2018 | EOS brought to shelves a blockchain-enabled infrastructure for decentralized apps (DApps) |
Now, over 5,000 cryptocurrencies are circulating the globe, and many of them are developed on innovative use-cases and applications as the ecosystem progresses fast.
What is the value of cryptocurrencies?
Today, cryptocurrency brings with it avant-garde advances that are transformative and diverse.
Additionally, it may also be an investment in tomorrow’s financial system —decentralized finance, (which is generally known as DeFi).
The DeFi is a blockchain-enabled form of finance that doesn’t depend on central financial intermediaries and the most common include exchanges, brokerages, or banks to deliver conventional finance instruments, and rather uses smart contracts on blockchains.
So, this rising alternative financial system is developed on a public blockchain, which can be accessed by anyone. Best of all, transactions are fully transparent across the system. This means that transactions are publicly available to view by all.
Let’s check a few of the practical benefits being administered across cryptocurrencies.
| Use Cases | Name | Description |
| Payments | BitcoinRipple (XRP)StellarDash | You can leverage these cryptocurrencies to purchase goods without the need of a trusted third-party |
| Value Storage | BitcoinLitecoin | As the supply of countless cryptocurrencies are confined, this scarcity affects their value |
| Stablecoins | DAIUSDCGeminiUSD | Digital money that’s generally fixed to a commodity or currency, such as gold |
| Privacy | MoneroZcash | Cryptography, the technology behind crypto, helps in enabling the anonymity of its owners |
| Digital Ownership | BitcoinRipple (XRP)Stellar | It helps in empowering those who have no access to a bank when it comes to entering the financial system |
| Digital Gold | Bitcoin | Bitcoin shares similar attributes to money: a technique of exchange, unit of account, and store of value |
| Decentralized Apps (DApps) | EOSTezosEthereum (ETH) | They help people in creating apps without a central authority, thus directly connecting the creator and user. |
Who are the key players in the crypto landscape?
As I have discussed at the very outset of this article that the potential of cryptocurrency is being recognized by many domains whether it is the private or public actors.
So, let’s learn about the primary participants in the field of cryptocurrency these days.
Private Actors
1. Institutional Investors —Harvard Endowment Fund, Crypto Hedge Funds
2. Banks & Finance —J.P. Morgan, Fidelity Investments, Swissquote
3. Cryptocurrency Exchanges — Coinbase, Bitstamp
4. Power & Utilities — RWE
5. Tech –– IBM, Microsoft
Public Actors
1. Organizations – Crypto Valley Association, Global Digital Finance
2. Central Banks – China, Sweden, Saudi Arabia
3. Governments —Venezuela
Just as cryptocurrency is getting popular these days, it is giving rise to new adoption and policies, as depicted by the several players trying to get into the arena.
Now, what is the big picture?
As digital currency is being adopted by a large number of organizations and people around the world, it may also cause some implications, in the long run.
Most importantly, its cryptographic base paves the ways for future developments in finance.
Ø Privacy – Anonymized transactions help in protecting users data through cryptographic methods.
Ø Access – It gives a new financial technique for 1.7B unbanked people around the globe.
Ø Efficiency – It helps in steeply reducing the settlement time and efficacy may help in saving consumers $16 billion per year.
Ø Security – It helps with immutable, traceable records of security-rich transactional networks
Ø Programmable Money – Smart contracts could drastically eliminate manual and administrative work— ultimately bypassing them altogether
Entrenched in autonomous and decentralized systems, virtual currencies are impacting the financial world. Finally, crypto helps in transforming finance as we know it — unpacking a large number of investment options across the worldwide economy.
After reading the article about how cryptocurrencies will redefine your finance settlement, we hope that you want to know more about the company that can guide you through the entire cryptocurrency ecosystem when it comes to settling your finance tasks.
If you have any questions about the cryptocurrency ecosystem or need some experts’ advice related to cryptocurrency in finance, we would be happy to answer them in the comment section below.
