Advantages of Cryptocurrency and the Future Benefits of Decentralization With the goal to create a decentralized control for currency, cryptocurrency has been at the center of this pursuit. Cryptocurrency is a digital currency working as a means of exchange and making use of strong cryptography to ensure that there is security of financial transactions, control of creation of additional units and the verification of the transfer of assets.
Advantages of Cryptocurrency
Transactions - Considering that the currency is peer-to-peer, it provides a one to one transaction platform hence getting rid of complication of transactions by third parties such as brokers.
Adaptability - The number of existent cryptocurrencies in circulation worldwide has been established to be approximately 1200 (Bunjaku, Gorgieva-Trajkovska, & Miteva-Kacarski, 2017). However, a significant proportion of the currencies have been developed for specific use.
Easier International Trade - Despite their large unrecognized nature on national levels, cryptocurrencies are not subject to exchange rates, transaction charges and interest rates. The implementation of a peer-to-peer model enables users to carry out transactions without complications.
Confidentiality of Transactions - Banks store transaction histories of individuals for the purpose of reference. The case is different in cryptocurrency as each transaction is a unique exchange between two parties.Additionally, the exchange is done on a ‘push’ basis, whereby parties only send what they intend to submit and nothing more hence preventing cases of identity theft (Bunjaku et al., 2017).
Strong Security - It is impossible to reverse a transaction once it has been authorized. The hedge protects users from cases of fraud by requiring that the buyer and the seller enter a specific agreement regarding funds in the case of mistake.
Individual Ownership - In a bank system, one has to effectively turn stewardship of their account to a third party who can exercise management in the case of death. In the case of cryptocurrency, unless one has delegated management of their wallet to another party, they are considered the sole owner of the corresponding public and private key.
Transaction Fees - Banks generate income from the transaction costs incurred by their users during different transactions (Schaupp & Festa, 2018). In cryptocurrency, data miners receive compensation from the cryptocurrency network involved. Consequently, there is no charging of transaction fees.
Timestamping - Through the use of various timestamping schemes, cryptocurrencies do away with the need for a trusted third party to timestamp transactions added to the blockchain ledger.
Access to Anyone - The number of individuals established to have access to the internet or mobile phones but no access to the traditional exchange systems is approximately 2.2 billion (Schaupp & Festa, 2018). With the access to a mobile phone, the individuals are ready for the Cryptocurrency market.
Future Benefits of Cryptocurrencies - The centralization of the traditional exchange systems makes it more vulnerable to economic hits. With the existence of cryptocurrencies, the world is becoming more economically safe. Markets have proven to be unstable and forever shifting, prices declining and rising variably but cryptocurrencies have been constant all along. Despite the fact cryptocurrencies were
References
Bunjaku, F., Gorgieva-Trajkovska, O., & Miteva-Kacarski, E. (2017). Cryptocurrencies–advantages and disadvantages. Journal of Economics, 2(1).
Schaupp, L. C., & Festa, M. (2018, May). Cryptocurrency adoption and the road to regulation. In Proceedings of the 19th Annual International Conference on Digital Government Research: Governance in the Data Age (p. 78). ACM.