Can someone please explain cryptocurrency

[paxman]

I have tried, honestly, but I don’t understand what it actually is. How it works and how people make real money from it.
can someone do a simple explanation for me please?

Bump

It’s a digital asset. Some view as a type of decentralised all world currency, others as a payment or contract method. Others as nothing more than a speculative bet or gamble.

Each coin works differently. Ie. Bitcoin, ethereum, cardano etc. As in they use different base technologies and are used by people in different ways.

People make money from them by buying and selling the coins; either for a profit if the price goes up or by buying them on a platform which allows shorting (betting that a price will go down).

I see Mn are hiding all replies until vetted which is a good thing imo.

I would suggest looking at Female Invest which is a financial platform and often there are free trials. They have some intro courses on crypto as well as more normal finance things like stocks and shares etc.

It’s not really currency as such. More similar to shares I’d say. People buy and sell it on exchanges, and it goes up and down in value. The most well known is probably bitcoin and you can buy some stuff with bitcoin but it’s not very common or mainstream I’d say. So mostly people put “real” money in and just leave it there as investment and/or withdraw “real” money out by selling it.

How weird! My reply didn’t say anything controversial, was just explaining it!

My husband has talked to me for literal hours and I still don't get it lol but he has made 5 figures in profit from it having spent a long time himself learning about it.

In the 1700s, people in Holland started making money selling tulip bulbs that might grow into beautiful valuable flowers. For a few years, tulip bulbs became more and more expensive because everyone thought they could make easy money from selling them to the next guy. Until one year people realised that most of the bulbs they were buying for enormous sums were diseased and wouldn’t ever grow. Then the market crashed and a lot of people lost a lot of money. A very few people (mostly the early investors) made money but most ordinary people lost out. Because the underlying thing you are buying (tulips) have no use in the real world.

crypto is a more elaborate version of the same. People buy and sell bitcoins that have no real world value and could easily lose all their money if (when) the market crashes. A few might get rich but most won’t.

so avoid it all.

It's two things.

1. An investment that's value is entirely determined by how valuable the market perceives it to be.
2. A currency that you can buy very little thing with (usually just illegal stuff).

The risk with crypto is huge - but so are the rewards.

So it's like trading in any other commodity (such as oil, gold or wheat) except in this instance the commodity is of no intrinsic value or use? You might as well be trading in virtual tiddly wink counters for example, where someone has deemed they are worth x amount? Have I got that sort of right?

Yes

Thank you!