This is the first lesson in the free crypto for beginners course that has 7 lessons in total. It will help you get a great start with crypto so you can get the most out of this opportunity.
All lessons will have both an article and you will receive an email with a new lesson every day. If you want to move ahead faster, you can find a link to the next lesson at the end of this lesson.
Some lessons will also have actionable tasks to help you get started easily. If you want the most out of this course, make sure to take action and do all the tasks.
So let's get started with the first lesson.
What Exactly Is Blockchain Technology?
Let's start with the basics and that is to understand a bit more about what blockchain technology is.
The world has witnessed the rise in blockchain technology over the past decade with Bitcoin being front and center. In the world of finance, blockchain has become extremely useful for recording transactions, transferring value, and being a distributed database that holds mass amounts of information.
But what is it really?
It is essentially a network of computers that have ledgers on them that record data and update data simultaneously. One could think of it like the cloud on the internet. When you upload something to the cloud it is accessible to others and sometimes even editable by others. This is similar to blockchain technology where transactions and value are updated and transferred throughout the particular blockchain at the same time.
The difference is, if I upload something to the cloud, it is only accessible to certain people. With blockchain technology, the information is not updated or changed by people but by the computers connected to the blockchain.
Not only are all the ledgers updated automatically and at the same time, they are done so by the distributed blockchain, so all the changes are agreed upon by decentralized parts of the blockchain. This means that none of the data can be corrupted by an individual actor or by a central part of the system. This has proven as one of blockchain technology's most attractive features. Because the data is stored and updated in a decentralized fashion, it is more secure and almost unable to be tampered with.
Blockchain is basically distributed ledger technology which means that transactions are recorded and distributed over all the blocks in the chain. Transactions cannot be reversed and are updated across the entire network. All the network participants have a ledger of the transactions.
Blockchain technology collects data in groups together as blocks, and each block contains a certain amount of data. When the data capacity of one block is filled, it is chained to the other blocks on the blockchain. This way, all the data is permanently recorded and viewable to every other block on the chain.
Another way to think of it is like an SQL database on a web server. The web developer that designed the SQL database could change anything in the database to his wishes. Blockchain solves this issue by being distributed and making sure that every transaction on the blockchain is agreed upon by all the participants in the chain.
Essentially, if one block is changed on the blockchain, it would be immediately become apparent that it was hacked. Since all the blocks must be congruent at all times with the same information, it would require a hacker to infiltrate every single block on the chain to do any kind of damage.
It uses an immutable cryptographic signature called a hash to record transactions. This is basically a very secure signature that is not vulnerable to attacks. This is the reason for the term cryptocurrencies and also why most all transactions are anonymous over most blockchains. Now the word cryptocurrency is a common term and there are thousands of different cryptocurrencies built on different blockchains all with different use cases and attributes.
Many attempts have been made to create a digital currency in the past, but before blockchain there were always hang-ups about the technology. Because there was always a centralized actor who could manipulate the data to his needs, digital currency was a hard feat to achieve. But, because of distributed ledger technology and blockchain, a very secure digital money seems to be here to stay. Bitcoin was able to solve this problem with its secure and distributed nature.
Bitcoin is still the dominant leader in the world of cryptocurrencies, but more and more cryptos are starting to gain traction as well. You will learn more about this and how to get started in the upcoming lessons.
This was just the beginning to give you some foundational knowledge about the technology behind cryptocurrency. In the upcoming lessons, we will go into more details and you will also get tasks to help you get started.
Next Lesson!
You will receive an email with the next lesson tomorrow. It will teach you all you need to know about Bitcoin as a beginner.
If you are eager to continue right away, you can already now find the next lesson here.