What is a cryptocurrency and how does it work?

As we get deeper into the world of cryptocurrencies you can see how versatile they are and the number of operations that can be performed with them. International currency transfers, loans between individuals, investment projects, or even buying and selling of products and services, are some of the facilities they offer.

Cryptocurrencies represent a completely different concept concerning fiat money, i.e. the currencies that you normally handle in your day-to-day life (euros, dollars, etc.). The way to manage them is different, although they are quite simple processes.

Knowing the particularities of how they work is important to avoid any possible problems.

Buying and selling coins:

This is one of the operations to master; in fact, it is essential. Without this function, it would not be possible to make transactions with the cryptocurrency, because it would not have a value.

Making transfers between individuals:

Cryptocurrencies are an ideal way to transfer money from one place to another in the world, thanks to their immediacy, their total digitalization, their decentralization, or their absolute security derived from blockchain technology.

And all these transactions can be divided as follows:

• Inputs: Inputs are references to an output of a past transaction that has not been used in any other transaction. They allow us to confirm the origin of the assets to be used in a transaction.
• Outputs: These contain the address to which the transfer has been made and the amount that has been sent. It also contains the exchange or returns addresses where the transaction returns are sent.
• Identifier (TXid): Each transaction will have its hash. This hash is generated from the inputs and outputs. This value is the one that allows identifying a transaction in a unique and unrepeatable way within a blockchain.
• Commission rate (fee): The commission is the small payment that miners receive for processing a transaction. Thus, the miner who generates a new block will receive a commission for each transaction processed within that block. The commission does not come explicitly in the content of a transaction, i.e. it is not associated with any output, since the miner who will receive that commission is not tasted.

At The Blue Manakin, we are interested in educating people to learn more about the medium they are entering. Normally we might enter this diverse world thinking that the only thing we can do with our cryptos simply boils down to buying and selling. When really in a transaction we can find other concepts.