2020 - State Of Crypto Currencies
Compiled 9/25/2020
Countries control the currency supply to control their population. Bitcoin took that power away. What controls bitcoin is supply and demand.
The power of currency control was transferred from the leaders to the creaters of the crypto currency. This caused an avalanche of new crypto currencies and tokens to be created. Grand visions and ideas created armies of crypto-currency cheerleaders. All hoping to drive the price of their investment up.
As of September 2020, My personal favorite crypto-currencies are Bitcoin, Ether (Ethereum), and Monero. Bitcoin is the original gangster with the most adopters and most vendors. Bitcoin is being used as a hedge to fight inflation in some third world countries.
Ethereum is the platform and the actual currency used on the Ethereum platform is Ether. Created by Vitalik Buterin and Gavin Wood in 2015. The interesting thing about Ethereum is that it is like a huge virtual machine. Applications and contracts can be built into this machine. The applications and smart contracts have not really taken off. But there are some successful programs going on. You can create tokens on the ethereum network. One of these is the Basic Attention Token. This is a crypto currency that can be earned in the Brave browser by viewing ads. The Basic Attention Token can easily be sent to website creators through the browser.
Monero is a crypto that concrentrates on privacy. Users can't search the blockchain and follow transactions like in Bitcoin and Ethereum. Many exchanges avoid monero because of the difficulty in the currency being tracked. Companies like Chainalysis do provide tools to government agencies to track crypto. They make tools like the Chainalysis Reactor to track the flow of crypt funds. But as far as I know. Monero can't be tracked, even though the IRS is trying to track it.
"Monero Means Money" is one of the best sources on information of Monero that I have seen.