What exactly is Cryptography?
Wikipedia Definition of Cryptocurrency and Cryptography:
Cryptography or cryptology (from Greek κρυπτός kryptós, “hidden, secret”; and γράφειν graphein, “writing”, or -λογία -logia, “study”, respectively) is the practice and study of techniques for secure communication in the presence of third parties called adversaries. More generally, cryptography is about constructing and analyzing protocols that prevent third parties or the public from reading private messages; various aspects in information security such as data confidentiality, data integrity, authentication, and non-repudiation are central to modern cryptography. Modern cryptography exists at the intersection of the disciplines of mathematics, computer science, electrical engineering, communication science, and physics. Applications of cryptography include electronic commerce, chip-based payment cards, digital currencies, computer passwords, and military communications.
Cryptography prior to the modern age was effectively synonymous with encryption, the conversion of information from a readable state to apparent nonsense. The originator of an encrypted message shared the decoding technique needed to recover the original information only with intended recipients, thereby precluding unwanted persons from doing the same. The cryptography literature often uses the name Alice (“A”) for the sender, Bob (“B”) for the intended recipient, and Eve (“eavesdropper“) for the adversary. Since the development of rotor cipher machines in World War I and the advent of computers in World War II, the methods used to carry out cryptology have become increasingly complex and its application more widespread.
Most importantly, Why does Crypto matter?
The bottom line about Cryptocurrency… “It’s like having a Swiss bank account in your wallet”
Cryptography has been around for thousands of years and is practically ingrained in our DNA so don’t think it’s going away anytime soon. This is just the beginning of a decentralized banking system, so either you are in or you are out, but just know it will still move forward without you.