Crypto What is it, BY KNN LINKU
KNN LINKU5 min read·Just now--
We are passing through a high-tech era. Everywhere, new innovative technologies are ruling. starting from the darwave, WhatsApp, AI products, plastic currency to electronic wireless cash dealing, so many after every day we wake up and find something new today.
If you are even on holiday and separated from the news and come back after a week, I am sure you will have missed something. I am not against it, obviously, but a little scary. feeling life is going under the artificial intelligence’s hand and will be okay after that? At the end of the day, we are human beings, and we have a soft heart, feelings, emotions, families, soft lifestyle. We need to be happy in a peaceful environment. I think everyone does. We have our biological body, and we have youth for hard work and old age to get happy, restful life. Need to talk human to human. Anyway will discuss about this topic another time in details, today I will discuss about a currency called Crypto.
For the last ten years, we have been listening to this over and over again.
We try to understand what crypto is and why it is a bigger issue now in 2026.
A cryptocurrency is a digital or virtual form of currency secured by cryptography, making it nearly impossible to counterfeit. Unlike traditional fiat currencies (like the Dollar or Euro Etc), it operates on decentralized, peer-to-peer networks — meaning it is not issued, regulated, or backed by any central bank or government. In other words, cryptocurrencies are Digital Tokens. They are a type of digital currency that allows people to make payments directly to each other through an online system.
The first true and operational cryptocurrency is Bitcoin, which was officially invented and launched on January 3, 2009. On this date, an anonymous programmer or group of programmers operating under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto mined the first-ever block of the Bitcoin network (well known as the Genesis Block) and released the software to the public. While Satoshi Nakamoto’s Bitcoin was the first fully functional and decentralized cryptocurrency, the underlying concepts and foundational technologies were being developed for decades prior. Here is a brief look at how the idea evolved.
E-Cash: American cryptographer David Chaum created a prototype of digital, untraceable money called eCash through his company DigiCash. It relied on cryptography but was highly centralized.
In the year 2008, Satoshi Nakamoto published the famous whitepaper titled BITCOIN: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System, which successfully combined cryptography with a decentralized mechanism to solve the issue of double-spending digital money. Cryptocurrency is not inherently good or bad; rather, it is a highly volatile technology and asset class with distinct advantages and severe risks. Whether it is right for you depends entirely on your financial goals, risk tolerance, and understanding of how these digital assets function.
Cryptocurrency fundamentally entered the capital markets in three major waves: as a peer-to-peer asset in 2009, through listed investment vehicles (like Bitcoin ETFs and crypto exchanges) in the 2020s, and increasingly through the Tokenization of traditional securities on the blockchain. Today, capital markets are witnessing a convergence known as REAL-WORLD Asset(RWA) Tokenization. Traditional securities (like bonds, money market funds, and equities) are being issued natively on blockchains to enable instant settlement and remove inefficiencies from layer-heavy traditional systems. Startups and established institutions alike now trade these tokenized assets on regulated, on-chain markets. There is no single “major shareholder” of cryptocurrency, as it is a decentralized ecosystem. Instead, the market is dominated by institutional investors, major cryptocurrency exchanges, publicly traded companies, and early mining pioneers.
The live Bitcoin (BTC) market capitalization is approximately $1.22 trillion, calculated by multiplying the circulating supply of roughly 20.04 million coins by its real-time price, where the current price is $60,800 — $61,100 USD, and the circulating supply is 20,039,087 BTC, where the maximum supply is 21,000,000 BTC. Now, in real-time, Bitcoin’s dominance is ~56% of the total crypto market. So Bitcoin is the highest cryptocurrency in the world, leading the industry in both Price per coin and Market Capitalization (the total combined value of all circulating coins).
Following Bitcoin, here are the next largest cryptocurrencies based on overall market value:
- ETH: Often considered the infrastructure layer of the decentralized internet, it has the second-largest market cap.
-USDT: The world’s largest stablecoin, which is pegged 1:1 to the U.S. dollar, making it a heavily used asset for trading.
BNB: The native token of the Binance ecosystem.
SOL: A layer-1 blockchain known for its high transaction speeds and low fees.
The future of cryptocurrency lies in deep institutional integration, the mainstreaming of real-world asset (RWA) tokenization, and stablecoins serving as the internet’s default dollar. Rather than replacing traditional finance, the crypto ecosystem is merging with it, bringing blockchain technology into everyday payment infrastructure.
But cryptocurrency is not legal in all countries till date; regulations vary widely, ranging from outright bans to comprehensive regulatory frameworks and legal tender adoption. In over 100 countries — including the United States, Singapore, the UAE, Germany, and Switzerland — cryptocurrency is fully recognized as property, an asset, or a commodity. These nations have established laws for taxation, Anti-Money Laundering (AML), and investor protection. Roughly 20 countries have completely banned the use, trading, or mining of cryptocurrency. These absolute prohibitions typically stem from concerns over capital flight, financial instability, and money laundering. Countries with blanket bans include China, Bangladesh, and Myanmar. Some jurisdictions allow individuals to own crypto, but prohibit domestic banks and financial institutions from facilitating cryptocurrency transactions or servicing crypto exchanges.
We don’t know about the future of this coin trade, and need to see how it is serving or lost like many other inventions in the past.
KNN Linku
Writer, Columnist
knnlinku @ gmail.com
