But like any other way of storing and transferring money, cryptocurrency is also not safe. Even though cryptocurrencies use advanced technology to ensure security, users can still face some threats such as cyber attack, fraud, data theft and others.

One of the main threats to users is the loss of the wallet where their cryptocurrencies are stored. This can happen if the user forgets the password or loses their device where the wallet is stored. If the user has not made a copy of the wallet, they will lose all their cryptocurrencies forever.

Another threat to users is hacking and theft of cryptocurrency. Cyber attacks can target cryptocurrency exchanges, specialized wallets or exchanges. If user data such as login, password and private keys fall into the hands of attackers, they can gain access to all cryptocurrency stored in the account. Additionally, scammers may try to trick users into swindling their cryptocurrency. Scammers may create false exchanges, exchanges and wallets, and use phishing sites to gain access to users’ data.

Another threat to users is the possibility of government or legislative bodies interfering with the regulation of cryptocurrency. This could lead to changes in cryptocurrency regulations, bans on cryptocurrency use, or possible changes in the mechanism of an exchange or wallet.

Impact of blockchain technology on the security of cryptocurrency transactions

Blockchain technology, on which all cryptocurrencies are based, has a huge potential to improve the security of cryptocurrency transactions. This technology, allows transactions to be stored on distributed nodes, making it impossible to modify or tamper with them. In addition, blockchain provides privacy and data protection by encrypting each transaction. This prevents unauthorized access to information about transfers and other cryptocurrency transactions.

Another important advantage of blockchain technology is the ability to track each transaction from its beginning to its end. Each transaction is recorded in a shared ledger that can be verified by other users. This makes the system more transparent and prevents fraud.

Despite all the advantages, blockchain technology also has its weaknesses, such as the possibility of 51% attack and intermediary attack. However, thanks to the constant development of the technology, these risks can be minimized. Finally, blockchain is a powerful tool for securing cryptocurrency transactions, which will reach greater and greater importance as cryptocurrencies grow in popularity in global markets.

How to prevent cryptocurrency loss

Digital attacks on cryptocurrency exchanges have become a frequent threat to users. The most common types of such attacks are cybercrimes, hacks, and phishing attacks. Cryptocurrency exchanges should be sure to provide the highest level of security possible to reduce the risks from such attacks and not lose the trust of their customers.

To protect their cryptocurrencies from threats, users can take some measures. They can use reliable, trusted services, use two-factor authentication, and use wallets with complex passwords and store them on devices separated from the internet.

Wallets like Trust Wallet and MetaMask are two of the most popular wallets for storing cryptocurrencies. They have several similar benefits as well as some differences.

Trust Wallet advantages:

• Safety and security. Trust Wallet uses several security methods including PINs, fingerprints, and 256-bit AES encryption;
• Convenience. Trust Wallet has a user-friendly and simple interface that makes it easy to manage your assets;
• Support for a variety of cryptocurrencies. Trust Wallet supports a wide range of cryptocurrencies including Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, Ripple, Stellar and many more;
• Accessibility for mobile devices. Trust Wallet is available for download on iOS and Android devices.

Advantages of MetaMask wallet:

• Safety and security. MetaMask wallet uses 12-word phrases for recovery phrases and supports two-factor authentication;
• Convenience. MetaMask wallet has a simple and intuitive interface that makes managing cryptocurrencies simple and easy;
• Ethereum support. MetaMask wallet was created specifically for Ethereum and supports all ERC-20 tokens;
• Browser Extension. MetaMask wallet is available as a browser extension for Chrome and Firefox, making it easy to transact directly from your browser.

Overall, both Trust and MetaMask are excellent cryptocurrency wallets with user-friendly interfaces and strong security. Choosing between the two depends on your personal preferences and needs for storing certain cryptocurrencies. In addition, users can make sure to follow the latest news related to cryptocurrency to stay up-to-date and learn about the current threats to cryptocurrency security and the most effective ways to protect their investments. Reasonable caution and fully securing your device are also essential aspects of protecting your funds.

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Cryptocurrency

Any cryptocurrency works on the blockchain, from bitcoin and etherium to meme coins like Dogecoin. Cryptocurrency is more often used to capitalize on increased volatility, some of the coins can double in value in a week, but visionaries see it as a tool for mass money transfers in their strategic plans. There are already many attempts to introduce, for example, bitcoin into retail – in some places you can even buy a carton of milk in a supermarket or a glass of beer in a bar with it, then there will be the now legendary “bitcoin accepted” sticker at the entrance.

Classic financial giants like PayPal and Square are also expanding their cryptocurrency services. Coinbase, a startup that allows people to buy and sell cryptocurrencies, went public last April and is now valued at $47 billion. Among the world’s biggest banks, the most progressive in terms of blockchain has long been JP Morgan, which back in 2017 developed its Quorum blockchain based on the Ethereum network.

Digital currency

Some nations are launching pilot projects to create digital currencies that run on blockchain. The most successful so far has been China, where tens of thousands of people have been credited with a digital yuan that can be used to pay at retail outlets and make transfers. If this experiment is successful, the digital yuan will appear in the country’s major economic hubs, such as Shanghai.

Smart contracts

With smart contracts, blockchain can track the entire supply chain and verify the authenticity of, for example, a coffee bean – where and by whom it was grown, how and when it was delivered to the supermarket counter. This helps to completely eliminate the fact that the bean has been tampered with, recognize its freshness, and even verify that its production is in line with your ethical and moral values.

NFT

One of the most popular cryptoassets of 2021 were NFTs (non-replaceable tokens) in the form of digital art that could be purchased on marketplaces like OpenSea, Rarible, and others. Simply put, an NFT is a certificate that confirms your rights to digital art: photos, paintings, music, and even gifs. Trading volumes of such NFTs have grown to billions of US dollars, according to various forecasts, the NFT sector will reach about 20% of the entire crypto industry capitalization by 2025.

Gaming industry

Another area of blockchain that is taking over the world is GameFi, the classic online games on your phone or computer that record everything that happens in the game in transactions on the blockchain and establish a new play-to-earn economy. One prime example is the Vietnamese-Philippine game Axie Infinity, where you have to train fictional monsters and do battle with them, earning real money. Such mechanics of the game gave ordinary residents of Vietnam and the Philippines the opportunity to earn unprecedented money, up to $1000 per month, and organize their lives.

Among the companies engaged in the full-fledged implementation of cryptoeconomics and in-game NFT in games, we can distinguish such as Enjin and Attarius Network. These companies aim to conduct a kind of accelerator program for game developers, providing them with everything they need – funding in the form of grants and direct investments, technical and marketing consulting, development and implementation of cryptoeconomics in games, connection to the leading graphics engines Unity and Unreal engine, on which the largest game companies have already created dozens of masterpieces.

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Blockchain is a database with transactions consisting of a sequentially built chain of digital blocks, each of which stores information about the previous and next blocks. It is a kind of digital notebook in which records are unchanged thanks to the hashing mechanism – a unique set of alphabetic and numeric symbols, where a change in one symbol leads to a change in other blocks. The main advantage of blockchain is its transparency, because everyone can read the information inside the blocks, but no one can change or destroy it.

How blockchain works

A blockchain is a distributed ledger system that is accessible to everyone on the network. For example, a blockchain-based digital currency can be created, moved and stored outside the purview of any government, financial institution or personal lawyer, but nevertheless every transaction is recorded on the blockchain and is public. It is a kind of Ariadne’s thread, breadcrumbs and navigator that leads anyone wishing to verify transaction information.

Blocks are added to the network through a mining procedure. For each new block, the miner receives a reward, which forms the financial basis of his activity. Once the first transaction is made, it must be verified by multiple participants in the network – this is the essence of decentralization of the blockchain without specific intermediaries. This means another advantage of blockchain over the classical financial system – unlike banks, blockchain operates around the clock and does not depend on the central bank of a particular country.

In 2014, it was reportedly possible to mine up to 1-2 bitcoins just on a regular computer at home, but to mine the same amount of bitcoins now, you have to tame complex math and find hundreds of video cards located in a single data center, also called mining farms. As miners want to earn more, they tend to buy as many specialized graphics cards as possible, which can be mined more efficiently than a conventional home, albeit powerful, computer. The shortage of chips used in graphics cards has influenced miners to buy up gaming graphics cards in 2021, which has raised the prices of Nvidia and AMD GPUs on the secondary market by two to three times.

The first algorithm for miners, including bitcoin, was called Proof-of-Work. It required a lot of computing power, which was provided by computers. That’s why now blockchains with Proof-of-Stake algorithm are appearing, where not machines, but validators – participants of the network responsible for its integrity and confirmation of all transactions taking place in the blockchain – rule the ball.

P-o-W requires a lot of electricity and expensive and rare specialized equipment. To become a P-o-S validator, one must have a certain number of coins of this network, pledge them, i.e. “create a stake” and put special software. By confirming transactions, validators are rewarded. The most prominent example of the P-o-W algorithm is the bitcoin network, and the alternative is the Ethereum network, which, although it started with the P-o-W algorithm, is in the process of transitioning to the P-o-S algorithm.

Types of blockchain

A blockchain can be a public network that anyone can connect to, or a private network that is typically used by organizations to avoid the loss of sensitive data.

After a while, the corporate sector has also taken notice of blockchain. The R3 consortium, which includes, for example, the American exchange Nasdaq and the Irish IT giant Accenture, created the Corda blockchain, which began to be used mainly in the financial sector. IBM’s Hyperledger blockchain has started to be used, for example, in the entertainment sector, reducing the counterfeiting and resale of event tickets, or in healthcare, to give access to patient data on the one hand and prevent its leakage on the other.

IBM clients find it much easier to work with a trusted vendor like IBM, which is why Hyperledger is quite popular with major corporations. Private blockchains are usually faster and cheaper, and all corporate data and transactions are held by a limited number of network participants. Admittedly, this leads to the fact that within a private network it is much easier to “collude and cheat” the system and much harder to communicate with another network. So when it comes to transparency and sustainability, everyone chooses the blockchain that serves their purposes.

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At first glance, initial coin offerings and security tokens perform a similar process by which an investor receives a cryptocurrency or token representing their investment. But unlike an ICO coin or token, a security-token comes paired with an investment asset such as stocks, bonds, and funds.

However, there are many more differences between an ICO and an STO. Let’s take a look at them.

What is the difference between an STO and an ICO?

First of all, most ICOs are designed to handle funds in an unregulated environment. Many ICOs actually position their offerings as utility tokens to circumvent regulations. Most founders and various projects claim that they distribute tokens to access their decentralized applications (DApps) or proprietary platforms. The basic logic here is that the purpose of their coin is for use, not speculation. This reasoning allows ICO projects to avoid regulation and the necessary registration with the SEC or other strict regulators.

ICO and STO processes

STOs, on the other hand, are launched with regulatory governance in mind. They are registered with the necessary government agencies, meet all legal requirements and are 100% legal.

Hence, it is much easier to launch an ICO than an STO. An STO requires that all regulatory requirements are met. While anyone can start participating in an ICO (unless local law says otherwise), only fully compliant companies and accredited investors can sell and buy security tokens.

ICO and STO: pros

The advantages of an ICO include:

• No barrier to entry for both buyers and sellers;
• Tokens are distributed in a simple, automated way;
• Teams can manage their funds the way they want;
• If the price of the coin goes up and the team delivers, investors receive high profits and benefits to other users;
• Some ICOs allow anonymous participation.

Benefits of STO:

• Investors actually purchase underlying assets that derive their value from something else;
• 100% regulated offerings that ensure investor safety;
• STO projects tend to be more mature and trustworthy than ICO projects;
• STOs are experiencing significant growth while the number of ICOs is declining;
• Security tokens are expected to be sold through brokers who are also monitored by regulators;
• Security tokens are the next big step in the evolution of traditional finance;
• Less speculation and market manipulation.

ICOs and STO: cons

The most obvious disadvantages of ICOs are:

• High volatility and manipulation of cryptocurrency;
• Low liquidity;
• Uncertainty whether the product will be finalized and delivered as stated in the white paper;
• Fraud, pump and dump schemes;
• Unregulated space with lots of risks.

Minuses of STO:

• Takes a lot of time, effort and money to get the green light from regulators;
• Only for accredited investors;
• May require a significant amount of money;
• So far, the SEC has not approved a single Reg A + STO, and only allows institutional investors to participate.

ICO and STO: Comparison

Despite their differences, both ICOs and STOs are proven fundraising methods for blockchain and similar projects, and both have their pros and cons. You have to decide for yourself what you want to participate in.

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Research the market

The first step to creating a successful cryptocurrency investing strategy is to research the market itself. Familiarize yourself with the major cryptocurrencies, their history, technology, and key indicators. You should also study the relationships between different cryptocurrencies and factors that can affect their price, such as news, changes in government policy, etc.

Determine your goals and risk level

Before you start investing in cryptocurrencies, you need to determine your goals and risk level. Figure out how much you are willing to risk and what percentage of return you would like to realize. Keep in mind that cryptocurrencies are a high-risk asset, so you should not invest all of your money in them.

Develop your strategy

Based on market research and determining your goals and risk level, develop your strategy for investing in cryptocurrencies. Determine which cryptocurrencies you will buy, when to buy them and when to sell them. It is important to keep up with current market events and periodically review your strategy.

Use various tools and analytical data

To determine when to buy and sell cryptocurrencies, you need to use different tools and analytical data. For example, you can follow cryptocurrency price charts, analyze trading volumes and use technical and fundamental analysis.

When the choice of assets is made, you need to decide on the time of buying and selling. In this case, it is important not only to consider the current state of the market, but also to understand long-term trends. If you believe in the growth potential of a particular cryptocurrency for a long period of time, it may make sense to keep it in the portfolio, even if its price is currently falling.

It is also recommended that you diversify your portfolio by including several different cryptocurrencies to reduce risk. This will reduce the probability of losses if one of the coins starts to fall in price.

In general, a successful strategy for investing in cryptocurrencies requires careful market analysis, proper selection of assets and correct timing of buying and selling. In addition, it is important to follow the news and trends in the market in order to adjust your strategy in time.

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When people use the words Bitcoin and blockchain as synonyms it is not true. But people still do so, it’s a popular misconception.

Bitcoin is not just a coin, it is also a protocol that is based on blockchain technology. A protocol is a set of rules by which members of a network communicate with each other. For example, part of the Bitcoin protocol governs how private and public keys should be managed, how mining occurs, how transactions are confirmed, and so on. Ethereum, waves, neo, ripple and some other cryptocurrencies have a similar protocol to Bitcoin.

This protocol, like Bitcoin and Ethereum, includes the definition of a coin, which is usually named after the protocol. This coin is what makes using the protocol interesting for people. It is used to reward people who “mine” or mine to add blocks to the blockchain and, more importantly, to buy something from each other.

Tokens, on the other hand, are in the third layer of the architecture. They exist thanks to smart contracts, which in turn work thanks to protocols (the second layer). Ethereum is currently the most popular protocol for creating smart contracts and tokens. Bitcoin’s protocol, on the other hand, ultimately does not allow for the creation of tokens because it does not support the creation of smart contracts.

A safe alternative to traditional banks

To understand cryptocurrencies well, let’s first understand how blockchain and conventional client-server architecture works.

Client-server architecture

The basic concept of this architecture is that the client (user) makes an http request to the server, and if everything is fine, the server sends the client a web page as a response. The web page itself usually contains data from some centralized database.

The very fact that all information is stored centrally, on one (conventionally) server, which is controlled by a bank or company, is a huge problem. Even more, the fact that all information is stored on one server increases the chance that the server will be hacked. This, in turn, jeopardizes the privacy of your data.

Blockchain

Blockchain solves two big flaws that are inherent in traditional client-server architecture – privacy and data security. Blockchain is a distributed and immutable storage, in addition all transactions in it can be monitored.

Let’s take this definition apart piece by piece. Distributed means that information is stored on a network of computers. This eliminates the need to have centralized servers. You can think of this storage as a ledger that keeps a list of all the transactions that occur on the blockchain. This vault is immutable, once information is in it, it cannot be deleted or changed from there.

Transactions on the blockchain are pseudonymous, you can see other people’s transactions but you don’t know who exactly is behind them, you can’t change the data that is contained in the transaction. Some cryptocurrencies allow you to encrypt the data in a transaction or even require you to do so.

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