For those who came late and missed the massive hype that Bitcoin and other similar cryptocurrencies, generated especially during 2017 and onward: cryptocurrencies are digital/virtual currencies, that is, unlike physical currencies, such as the dollar, euro or rupee, cryptocurrencies exist just as entries in a distributed database (usually). Various cryptographic techniques are deployed to record cryptocurrency transactions and their generation, and so these digital currencies are generically known as cryptocurrencies.
Since cryptographic techniques are beyond the scope of this book, we won't be covering them here.
As of the time of writing this chapter, there are more than 1,500 cryptocurrencies available, and the better cryptocurrencies out of those 1,500 cryptocurrencies serve a unique purpose.
You can check the number of known/traded...
