What is Cryptocurrency ?

Cryptocurrency is a type of digital currency that is based on cryptography. Cryptocurrency uses cryptography for security, making it difficult to counterfeit. Public and private keys are often used to transfer the currency from one person to another.

Cryptocurrency is considered a counter-culture movement. Cryptocurrency is essentially a fiat currency, which means it only has value if people agree to such and use it as a medium of exchange. However, because it is not tied to any country, its value cannot be affected by a central bank. In the case of Bitcoin, the most prominent functioning example of cryptocurrency, its value is determined by supply and demand in the market. As such, this currency behaves much like gold and other precious metals. -Source Technopedia

The best place to start learning and pretty much the official source for information are the Bitcoin forums: https://bitcointalk.org/

There is a nice glossary for you to get familiar with crypto terminology on CoinPursuit.

There’s also a ton of information on the Bitcoin wiki page: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Main_Page

A Word Of Advice

CryptoSource’s only advice. Don’t invest more than you’re willing to lose. Cryptocurrencies are incredibly risky. So you need to look at it like throwing money in the fire… except that fire has a slight chance of exploding into gold. Basically, don’t mortgage your house and sell your first born for Bitcoins. The value can go up to $1000 or down to $0 just as easily.

Basically, just bookmark the forums and the exchanges. Read, click links, read some more.. then put in $100 or so and play around with it… you’ll probably lose it and once you get more comfortable with the way everything works, put in a bit more and go from from there. Don’t get discouraged if you don’t win on your first try. I lost $500 in the first week I tried… but after I started to see how everything was moving… I made it back within the next 2 weeks.

Now that you have a better understanding on cryptocurrencies, let’s get started.