The Bitcoin and other virtual currencies
Electronic currency Bitcoin is the best known and most widely used, but dogecoin is part of a long list of virtual money that has proliferated in cyberspace.
The Jamaican team qualified for the 2014 Winter Olympics – to be held in the Russian city of Sochi from 7 February, managed to raise $25,000 through the virtual currency known as dogecoin in just a few hours.
The lack of a budget of athletes to be able to attend the event, led a group of athletes to make a call for the donation of funds that would pay for her travel to Russia. The contribution will be done through the digital currency that is identified with the face of a dog Shiba Inus.
Electronic currency Bitcoin is the best known and most widely used, but dogecoin is part of a long list of virtual money that has proliferated in cyberspace after the success of bitcoin and they work in a similar way.
“The popularity and strength of these currencies is in the way of operating. Your production system is based on mathematical algorithms, which makes them very safe, also employs a vast network that helps users check the transactions that you make, which gives transparency to the process,” he tells BBC World Jeremy Bonney, editor of Coindesk, a publication on the Internet dedicated to the analysis of virtual currencies.
Other analysts instead ensure that some virtual coins present risks as the possibility of being used for criminal activities. Also criticizes the volatility in the price of many of these coins.
Bitcoin appeared in 2009 and its essence is to avoid the presence of intermediaries, such as banks, in the process of creation of money and in transactions that are carried out with the same. This is accomplished through a technology that allows users to share information directly, without the need for servers, called P2P or peer-to-peer network (peer to peer).
For carrying out the operations performed a procedure called mining, which is the resolution of a mathematical algorithm. For each problem solved, is processed a block of bitcoins.
To obtain it, you have to have some sort of virtual mailbox from which you send and receive electronic currencies, which are stored in a “wallet” that is hosted on the network.
It is difficult to know with certainty how many types of digital currencies exist today, but the web site coinmarketcap.com, that is dedicated to register the market capitalisation of this type of currency in real time, you will have a list of 78.
Below is a selection of some of the most popular alternatives virtual currencies that currently exist, based on its market capitalization as of today. (In your description is used information provided by the web sites of each).