Now, it is possible to-quite literally-put your money to work for you. Well, in theory at least, thanks to the Ethereum network
Bitcoin remains limited in terms of functionality. Ethereum is a decentralised platform that runs Smart Contracts: applications that run exactly as programmed without any possibility of downtime, censorship, fraud or third party interference.
Now, it is possible to-quite literally-put your money to work for you. Well, in theory at least, thanks to the Ethereum network.
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Over the past eight months, investors and analysts have noticed the rocketing rise of Ether, the three-year-old cryptocurrency associated with Ethereum, a network based on the blockchain technology, exactly like the Bitcoin. For those who are new to the world of cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ether, these are digital forms of money that live online, whose movements are recorded in embedded algorithms. Bitcoin was the world's first major cryptocurrency.
Akshay Haldipur
City's cryptocurrency millionaire
We reached out to one of Mumbai's first Bitcoin (BTC) millionaires, Akshay Gautam Haldipur. He made his first crore last year. At the time, Akshay had picked up four Bitcoins for $20-25 each. Today, Bitcoins are valued at roughly $2,300 each. "Ethereum is the new technology that people have jumped onto, as the network provides flexibility for products if you're implementing it at a company. My projection for Ether is that it should touch close to around $700-800 by the end of the year if everything sails smoothly. It definitely has a faster growth rate than BTC, which, predictably should touch close to between $4,500 and $5,500 by December 2017 and between $11,500 and $13,000 by early next year if all goes well."
However, Bitcoin remains limited in terms of functionality. Enter Ethereum-'a decentralised platform that runs Smart Contracts: applications that run exactly as programmed without any possibility of downtime, censorship, fraud or third party interference.' What sets Ethereum apart is that the code written on its blockchain cannot be altered or hacked. The Ethereum platform is married to its cryptocurrency asset Ether (ETH), and allows you to build and execute smart contracts and Distributed Autonomous Applications (DApps) without human interaction. After this, it is the Ether that helps in executing these apps and contracts. In short, this means that much more advanced functionality and applications can be developed above it (Ethereum).
Toshendra Sharma
Smart Contracts, ICO
29-year-old IIT-B pass out Toshendra Sharma, who is the co-founder and CEO of RecordsKeeper, a blockchain-based record keeping company, admits that he was initially skeptical about the legalities behind Bitcoin, but delved into the blockchain technology last year after thoroughly studying it. "If you have your whole bank account statement since the first day you opened your account, the blockchain technology will show you all your debit and credit entries in a ledger, till date. If the ledger is stored on a distributed platform across thousands of computers in such a way that all the computers talk to each other and keep the statement updated, it is called blockchain," he said. "The best example of a Smart Contract is Initial Coin Offering (ICO)," he said.
"Ether was 18 cents at the time of its launch; today it is in the $273-275 range, having grown 3,412 times," he said, further explaining the reason behind its exponential growth.
Case against cryptocurrencies
However, not everything is rosy in the cryptosphere. Earlier this week the third most popular cryptocurrency exchange got hacked. "These exchanges don't work on blockchain; they work like any other website that buys BTC in bulk from mining pools at cheaper costs and then sells it on the exchange," said Haldipur. "I suggest that people go in for a hardware ledger to prevent their funds from getting hacked."
2008 The year in which Satoshi Nakamoto invented the Bitcoin
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