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| The Bitcoin logo |
Bitcoin is a name that most people have heard of. You might not have heard the term "
cryptocurrency" or the names of other examples such as
Litecoin,
Peercoin or
Dogecoin. Cryptocurrency refers to any currency type that uses cryptography to ensure the verifiability and in most cases, anonymity of all transactions. Bitcoin was the first modern cryptocurrency, but there have been many others. In fact, creating a new cryptocurrency is so easy that the proliferation of them is getting a bit out of control. A
new currency introduced this month, for example, only has 42 possible coins that can be mined--an homage to Douglas Adams'
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy comedy / science fiction series of novels. These vanity and joke currencies began after an Internet meme was turned into the only semi-serious cryptocurrency, "Dogecoin," which refers to the misspelling of "dog" often used on Web sites such as reddit.com.
So, is this just a silly and short-lived flurry of activity? Will Bitcoin and all it's silly ilk die off?
