What is cryptocurrency: 21st-century unicorn – or the money of the future?

This introduction explains the most important types of wallet in cryptocurrencies. After you‘ve read it, you‘ll know more about it than most other humans.

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Today cryptocurrencies have become a global phenomenon known to most people. While still somehow geeky and not understood by most people, banks, governments and many companies are aware of its importance.

In 2016, you‘ll have a hard time finding a major bank, a big accounting firm, a prominent software company or a government that did not research cryptocurrencies, publish a paper about it or start a so-called blockchain-project.It is a currency associated with the internet that uses cryptography, the process of converting legible information into an almost uncrackable code, to track purchases and transfers.

Cryptography was born out of the need for secure communication in the Second World War. It has evolved in the digital era with elements of mathematical theory and computer science to become a way to secure communications, information and money online.

There exists various types of cryptocurrency wallets to allow users store and access their digital currencies in different ways. The question that is relevant in this context is how far are these wallets secure. Before taking up the security aspect, it is helpful to understand the various types or varieties of cryptocurrency wallets that exist today.

Cryptocurrency wallet: Types and varieties

These wallets can broadly be classified in 3 categories:

Software wallets

Hardware wallets and

Paper walletsCryptocurrency software wallets can again be sub-divided into desktop, online and mobile wallets.

Desktop software wallets: These wallets are meant to be downloaded and installed on desktop PCs and laptops. This particular variety offers the highest level of security though their accessibility is limited only to the computer in which they are installed. Moreover, in case, if the computer gets hacked or is virus-infected, there's a possibility that one may lose all his or her money.

Online software wallets: This range of cryptocurrency wallets run on the Cloud. Thus, they can easily be accessed from any computing device and from any geographical location. Apart from accessibility convenience, this type of digital wallets store the private keys online. The keys are even controlled by third-parties; this makes them easily vulnerable to hacking and theft.

Mobile software wallets: Unlike the two other varieties, mobile software wallets run on smartphones through an app. These can easily be used everywhere, including retail stores and malls. This range of the wallets is usually much simpler and smaller compared to the normal desktop ones to accommodate with the very limited space on mobile handsets.

Difference between hardware and software wallets

Hardware digital wallets vary from the software ones on the aspect of storing a user's private keys. The hardware wallets store the user keys in a hardware device (for example, the USB). Thus, as the keys are stored offline, these wallets offer an added security. Moreover, hardware wallets are easily compatible with many online interfaces and can also handle different currencies. This variety of cryptocurrency wallets is also easy to make transactions with. As a user, you just need to plug in the device to any computer, which is connected to the web before entering a PIN, transfer the currency and just confirm the transaction. Your digital currency is kept offline by the hardware wallets and thus, the risk factor or security concern is also much lesser.

Paper digital wallets: This range of digital wallets is also user-friendly and ensures a high-level of security. The term "paper wallet" just refers to the hardcopy printout of a user's both public and private keys. However, considering the instances, it can also refer to a software application meant to generate the keys securely before printing.

Bitcoin

The one and only, the first and most famous cryptocurrency. Bitcoin serves as a digital gold standard in the whole cryptocurrency-industry, is used as a global means of payment and is the de-facto currency of cyber-crime like darknet markets or ransomware. After seven years in existence, Bitcoin‘s price has increased from zero to more than 650 Dollar, and its transaction volume reached more than 200.000 daily transactions.

There is not much more to say: Bitcoin is here to stay.

Ethereum

The brainchild of young crypto-genius Vitalik Buterin has ascended to the second place in the hierarchy of cryptocurrencies. Other than Bitcoin its blockchain does not only validate a set of accounts and balances but of so-called states. This means that Ethereum can not only process transactions but complex contracts and programs.

This flexibility makes Ethereum the perfect instrument for blockchain -application. But it comes at a cost. After the Hack of the DAO – an Ethereum based smart contract – the developers decided to do a hard fork without consensus, which resulted in the emerge of Ethereum Classic. Besides this, there are several clones of Ethereum, and Ethereum itself is a host of several Tokens like DigixDAO and Augur. This makes Ethereum more a family of cryptocurrencies than a single currency.

Ripple

Maybe the less popular – or most hated – project in the cryptocurrency community is Ripple. While Ripple has a native cryptocurrency – XRP – it is more about a network to process IOUs than the cryptocurrency itself. XRP, the currency, doesn‘t serve as a medium to store and exchange value, but more as a token to protect the network against spam.

Ripple Labs created every XRP-token, the company running the Ripple network, and is distributed by them on will. For this reason, Ripple is often called pre-mined in the community and dissed as no real cryptocurrency, and XRP is not considered as a good store of value.

Banks, however, seem to like Ripple. At least they adopt the system with an increasing pace.

Litecoin

Litecoin was one of the first cryptocurrencies after Bitcoin and tagged as the silver to the digital gold bitcoin. Faster than bitcoin, with a larger amount of token and a new mining algorithm, Litecoin was a real innovation, perfectly tailored to be the smaller brother of bitcoin. “It facilitated the emerge of several other cryptocurrencies which used its codebase but made it, even more, lighter“. Examples are Dogecoin or Feathercoin.

While Litecoin failed to find a real use case and lost its second place after bitcoin, it is still actively developed and traded and is hoarded as a backup if Bitcoin fails.

Monero

Monero is the most prominent example of the cryptonite algorithm. This algorithm was invented to add the privacy features Bitcoin is missing. If you use Bitcoin, every transaction is documented in the blockchain and the trail of transactions can be followed. With the introduction of a concept called ring-signatures, the cryptonite algorithm was able to cut through that trail.

The first implementation of cryptonite, Bytecoin, was heavily premined and thus rejected by the community. Monero was the first non-premined clone of bytecoin and raised a lot of awareness. There are several other incarnations of cryptonote with their own little improvements, but none of it did ever achieve the same popularity as Monero.

Monero‘s popularity peaked in summer 2016 when some darknetmarkets decided to accept it as a currency. This resulted in a steady increase in the price, while the actual usage of Monero seems to remain disappointingly small.

Besides those, there are hundreds of cryptocurrencies of several families. Most of them are nothing more than attempts to reach investors and quickly make money, but a lot of them promise playgrounds to test innovations in cryptocurrency-technology. Sweeping with paper walletsUsing paper wallets is relatively somewhat easier. In order to transfer any cryptocurrency to your paper wallet, just transfer the funds from the software wallet to the public address, which your paper wallet displays. Similarly, when you want to spend or withdraw your money, just transfer the funds from the paper wallet to your software wallet. This procedure is popularly referred to as 'sweeping'.Sweeping can be done either manually, by entering the private keys or scanning the QR code on a paper wallet.How secure cryptocurrency wallets areDifferent varieties of digital wallets offer different levels of security. The security aspect mainly depends on two factors:

The type of wallet you use - hardware, paper, online, desktop or mobile
A chosen service provider

It doesn't require mentioning, it is much safer to keep the currencies in offline environment, as compared to online. There's just no way to ignore the security measures, irrespective of the wallet one has chosen. If you lose your private keys, all the money kept in the wallet will be gone away from your hands. On the other hand, if the wallet gets hacked or you transfer funds to a scammer, it won't be possible to reverse the transaction nor reclaim that money.Investing in cryptocurrency is a smart business idea and for that, using a suitable wallet is inevitable. You just need to be bit cautious to ensure safety and security aspect to your fund transfers and transactions.

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