Cryptocurrency is Cryptic To Me

Introduction

In the post at the end of this, I initially thought I had covered every Vocal Community with my writing but there were six that I had not touched, so I thought it would be a challenge to, so to speak, complete the set.

After this in the Vocal Chain Community, I will have Blush to do, but as these areas have not caught my attention before there may only be one story from me in each of these communities.

There are two that I have not graced with my presence so far are:

Blush

Chain *

The Chain Mission Statement is as follows:

Cryptocurrency is only the beginning of a decentralized future. The blockchain revolution is upon us, and ‘seeing is believing’ is a thing of the past. The Chain demystifies the invisible, intangible and seemingly infallible blockchain technology.

Cryptocurrency is a mystery to me that I do not want to unravel and have no interest in. I generally see it as a Ponzi scheme where a few can make a lot of money but most will lose everything.

My Initial Exposure and Impressions of Cryptocurrency

I’m not sure when I first heard about bitcoin, blockchain and other parts of the cryptocurrency universe but it made me hark back to the loathsome practices of the stock market. When the London Stock Exchange was being computerised in the late eighties I was asked to go and work on it. I refused because all I would want to do is actually destroy it.

The thinking is that both Stock Trading and Cryptocurrency do not produce anything apart from changes to the contents of bank accounts. There is nothing that benefits society like say roads, rail, healthcare, or products such as pottery and cutlery. These may seem frivolous but if they did not exist no amount of money or cryptocurrency could deliver the same benefits.

If you are a multi-millionaire and there is nothing you can buy then you are in the same position as a man who has nothing.

Almost on a daily basis, I get friend requests on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram from people purporting to be crypto experts, exhorting me to invest a few hundred pounds to which I tell them I am not interested. This is followed by increasingly aggressive emails wanting to know why I am not interested until eventually they give up and go to look for new marks.

So What Is Cryptocurrency?

Cryptocurrency, sometimes called crypto-currency or crypto, is any form of currency that exists digitally or virtually and uses cryptography to secure transactions. Cryptocurrencies don't have a central issuing or regulating authority, instead using a decentralized system to record transactions and issue new units.

Recently I have started to produce digital art which can be sold as NFTs which are defined as:

Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are cryptographic assets on a blockchain with unique identification codes and metadata that distinguish them from each other.

Unlike cryptocurrencies, they cannot be traded or exchanged at equivalency. This differs from fungible tokens like cryptocurrencies, which are identical to each other and, therefore, can serve as a medium for commercial transactions.

The thing is I really cannot be bothered with all this palaver so allow my work to be downloaded on Pixabay for credit and people can leave a tip via Paypal, but despite 81 downloads I still haven’t had a tip, but that’s life.

You can see my Pixabay creations here:

And my Night Cafe creations here

Concluding Cryptocurrency

This article has probably helped no one, but I still find it confusing and I really can’t be bothered putting effort into this as I have lots of other things in my life that are far more interesting.

This is the article that inspired this: