Crypto
Crypto is the future but just like fiat, there is alot of new terminology and moving parts to it. And this is why most of the people have not yet started.
Right now, you will hear terms such as “trading” when it comes to crypto and we automatically think of this as stock trading, it is not. It is a simple term to trade one crypto currency to another. There is over 23 Thousand different cryptocurrencies on the market as of this writing, with Bitcoin ( BTC ) and Ethereum ( ETH ) leading the market with only 9 thousand of them active with value. In the near future the world governments will create their own CBDC ( central banking digital currency ) to replace or use along side their paper fiat money. This is another reason why many have yet to start buying crypto. The good thing right now is that you can spend $30 USD on Bitcoin and HOLD it to get more value on it. This goes for all crypto right now. There is plenty of knowledge on the internet when it comes to crypto and I urge everyone to at least invest in a small amount of crypto now while it is still growing in value. Besides the actual crypto, you more than likely heard of crypto exchanges. These are websites or apps that help you buy, sell and trade crypto. While these are very popular, they should be avoided at all costs. You will want to actually have your crypto stored in a wallet that you have access to 24/7. Alot of people that have been holding and trading crypto will tell you otherwise but Some of these are fraud scam type of fronts for political organizations or simply down right fake. We have seen how FTX, Genesis, Gemini and others all became bankrupt leaving millions of investors without their crypto – this is why having a wallet is the safer approach. There are two types of crypto wallets: Hot wallets and Cold wallets. Hot is connected to the internet and you can use your crypto very quickly while the cold wallet is offline and using the crypto takes a few days. More information can be found here.
You got some crypto, you been holding for awhile and see a nice big increase of value, and lets say you want to use it? I came across this issue and since crypto is in its infancy, there is not alot of ways you can shop with crypto at psychical locations. Using it online on websites is easy but actual stores with pinpad card readers is still starting out. This is where you want to research your wallets to see if they offer a debit card. Services such as WireX and Bitpay are great apps that offers you a card to spend your crypto. Both are super easy and fast to learn – this is also the best way to research your crypto first hand.
The main reason for this page is for the bare simplest, easiest and quickest way to start using crypto before it becomes the standard. The biggest thing about the current crypto on the market is that most of them are very secure in terms if privacy and security. They are completely decentralized meaning there is no central server or service that contains the data. This is p2p ( peer to peer ) technology. Your data is stored on your devices/wallet/exchanges and to buy or sell a special address is created to invoice the transaction. This transaction gets put into a blockchain ledger but does not contain any meta data. CBDC are centralized meaning the ledger, transactions and the crypto are stored in the countries own central bank. Now this should be normal and ok IF both can be used interchangeably or at least your own crypto can be transferred into your CBDC and this is the problem alot of countries have right now because they will be dealing with alot of push-backs since many people have crypto already, alot of them are life savings and retirement funds. This topic will soon be up for debate and protest soon but as of right now there should be no fear in starting with the decentralized currency.