The Rising Popularity of Cryptocurrency; What Future It Will Bring Us

You were at the cashier of a grocery store after work. It was a hard day and you were exhausted. So when the cashier was done with your groceries, you intended to leave fast. But when you opened your wallet, you realized you didn’t have enough cash and needed to divvy up the bills among cards and cash. Or you did have enough cash and on the other hand it turned out that the cashier ran out of change. Is this scene familiar to you? However, you didn’t need to go through all of those troubles if you’d had digital currency in your pocket.

Digital currency or cryptocurrency is a digital asset which can be used as a medium of exchange. It is able to be purchased by buying, which is frequently known as, altcoins (alternative coins). With cryptocurrency, you won’t need your wallet anymore. And unlike cash, cryptocurrency is a universal virtual currency so there is no need for you to worry about the exchange rate between currencies when you buy things online from other countries.

After the first decentralized cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, launched at 2009 by Satoshi Nakamoto, the popularity of virtual currency continues to soar. Since then, many kinds of cryptocurrencies introduced to the public such as Ripple and Ethereum. Is it the time cryptocurrencies take over our cash payment?

As we live in a fast progressing times, cyptocurrencies offer what cash couldn’t, the universality and the simplicity of it as a medium of transaction. On the other hand, it lacks of regulation and in most countries, the use of it in any kind of situation is considered illegal.

As the purchasing and the exchanging of it is done over the internet, the owning and transferring of cryptocurrency is done anonymously and self-governing. With that reason, people have unrestricted access and unguarded transactions which are hard to track by formal banking systems or any governmental institutions. Therefore, it can lead to money laundering, tax evasion, theft, fraud, illegal gambling, etc. There are many cases on how cryptocurrency lack security. Russia Today reported that in October 2013, a Chinese Bitcoin trading platform, GBL, suddenly shut down and caused to the loss of subscribers’ up to $5 million worth of Bitcoin. In December, 2017, NiceHash, a Slovenia-based company, lost more than $60 million worth of Bitcoin after being stolen as the result of an alleged cyber-attack. For those reasons, some countries ban the use of it explicitly and threaten to take legal actions toward those who use it.

Despite the refusal of the government to make cryptocurrency as a legal currency, the changing world needs a solution to cover the shortcomings of cash. It seems like cryptocurrency is one of the ways out. The governments have two options to consider. First is constructing standard regulations that strictly regulate the circulation of this new currency. Or two, find a more advanced and trustworthy medium of exchange to run side by side with our fast evolving world.