The cash in your wallet has seen many days, been in many hands & ventured through your country, if not the world. But times are changing, for instead of physical cash, we will have digital currencies with which we will be more flexible in moving our money from anywhere around the globe. Not to mention, it is also possible with cash; it's just not as adaptable, not as convenient & counterintuitively, not as safe. Cryptocurrencies are based on advanced technologies such as blockchain & are the future of currency worldwide, claims Andrew Blumer, a Harvard University alumni & CEO of Compare Brokers, a broker review & comparison website.

You must have heard of the ever-grossing Bitcoin, well Bitcoin is only one of the many cryptocurrencies, it's popular because it has seen better days than the other ones. So to summarize what cryptocurrency is, 

Cryptocurrency is a digital currency that acts as a medium of transactions through secured networks; a cryptocurrency may be referred to as a coin. Like Bitcoin, a cryptocurrency can be owned by individuals, having it stored in a computer database secured by cryptography.

Since this technology is relatively new, considering it has a long road ahead of it, the prices of individual coins fluctuate persistently. Thus, the fluctuations act to behave as they do for stocks. This opens up a wide range of investment opportunities, taking the example of bitcoin investors, those who purchased bitcoins early, like during the time bitcoin was new & its prices meager, made enormous profits out of it as bitcoin took off.

Now that doesn't mean the opportunity is over, for one, there are plenty of coins to invest in that have the potential to compete with bitcoin; for another, people are still making a living out of the fluctuations in the prices of these coins. Unsurprisingly, there are even online courses that teach the tips & techniques involved in trading cryptocurrency. 

Here is How You Can Use This Opportunity:

Mining: 

CryptoCurrency is made out of different complex mathematical structuring of data (e.g., blockchain technology), to process this complexity, ragingly expensive high-end computers are required. Just like how gold mining is difficult & stressful, Crypto mining is very exhausting for the computer hardware to perform. But back in the day mining was uncommon & more profitable, it was relatively easy to do this; thus, with increasing more awareness of mining, some experts claim that profitable mining might go obsolete. 

Buying and Holding:

"Hodl" is a slang in the Crypto community, used to identify buyers who buy cryptocurrency & keep it, hoping that it will be profitable one day, and no, it's not an unintentional misspelling of the term "hold". As the prices fluctuate consistently, holders sell their coins when it's profitable to them. Note that it's not always beneficial, some drops in prices of coins can be permanent or last a very long time. The coins purchased are stored in digital wallets; some websites provide digital wallets, but if you are a serious trader, it is safer to buy a physical hard drive intended to store cryptocurrency. Baring in mind that if the wallet is lost & no backup has been made, your coins will be lost.  

Crypto Trading:

Buying & Holding is a part of Crypto Trading & is intended for short term profits. Expanding on that, traders buy coins that they see potential in & hold on to them for a considerable amount of time to expect profits.

The methods described above are tricky & need more knowledge to implement them; therefore, it is better to do more research.

As stated earlier, this technology is not in its optimum state, "We've seen with some of the cryptocurrencies our brokers work with, the backend technology in its current state is difficult to work with." explains Andrew of Compare Brokers. 

Considering how fast technology advances, it would be better to catch this train early. "Statistics show that the internet has gone from 413 million global users in 2000 to 4.5 billion in 2020." Explains Andrew Blumer of the fintech website Compare Brokers. "Online advertising is expected to grow by a further 40% in the next six years." says Andrew. Statistics have also shown that by the year 2030, cash might completely be replaced by cryptocurrency, at least in First world countries.