Cryptocurrencies have become a (dangerous) hype with my generation (millennials) and some older. Is there some legitimacy towards cryptocurrency or is just fading away in 5 or 10 years.
Let start with negative side. It is horrendously complicated to maintain and to transact for the average person. A non-tech savvy person is not likely to come in contact with this phenomenon. Thereby it fluctuates like crazy, 20%+ gaines in a few hours or in a day in not uncommon. It’s crazy, you could almost get a heart attack. The current technology costs a lot of power.
What is positive side? Every cryptocurrency has a mathematically limited supply (the legit ones). It is open source, which means that de best programmers in de world can check its code for the validity. In terms of trading, you can practically trade worldwide without having problems with fraud. For day traders this is the ultimate dream; because of the heavy fluctuations there a very decent profit margin to be made.
It is tremendously save. You could place your cryptocurrency on a usb stick, away from the internet. It is ‘cryptographic’ money, so by nature it is protected.
There is a platform that allows users to lease solar panels and sell solar energy. Then there is this “Geothermal and hydroelectric plants abound on Iceland, driving down the wholesale cost of power, which lets bitcoin miners make higher profits as they run their computers 24/7, 365 days a year”.
It obviously has its pros and cons. We are in a very early stage of development and adoption. Most people buy cryptocurrencies and hold them to eventually make money on them. That is very possible but you need to do very decent research.
Let me just say this; cryptocurrency play ideally into the government’s idea of eliminating cash for a safe digital currency and or asset.