# Cryptocurrency |  | A **Cryptocurrency**, crypto-currency, or crypto is a digital currency designed to work as a medium of exchange through a computer network that is not reliant on any central authority, such as a government or bank, to uphold or maintain it. It is a decentralized system for verifying that the parties to a transaction have the money they claim to have, eliminating the need for traditional intermediaries, such as banks, when funds are being transferred between two entities. | |-|-| | | wikipedia:: [Cryptocurrency](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptocurrency) | e.g. [[BitCoin]], Ethereum ## Issues Much confusion among cryptocurrency as a: - [[Medium of exchange]] - ie, as a [[Currency]], ie, as something that needs to be practical to actually use day to day, with at least some level of a common or standard [[Unit of account]]. - Ie, [[BitCoin]] is very impractical as a medium of exchange. Plus each transaction is not efficient computationally nor is it fast. Worse, it has high [[Environmental Science|Environmental]] costs - Versus as a [[Store of value]] which is where a lot of the hype and money comes from - people hoping to make a buck, regardless of whether it has use as a currency or if its value will come from some trustless [[Decentralized computing|decentralized]] future. ## Sources - [[Annotation - A Normal Person Explains Cryptocurrency]]