Trading in the age of Blockchain
By: Team Koinex
Tags: Trading, Ethereum, Team, Bitcoin, Cryptocurrency

You’re in a cab, you listen to a mutual fund advertisement. You’re flipping channels on TV, you watch a bank’s investment plan advertisement. You’re reading the morning newspaper, you see a government bond’s advertisement. But that’s not all. You’re talking to a friend, and she tells you how investing in the stock market will reap tremendous returns.

All these people who suggest different instruments for you to invest in are practically unaware of the revolution called blockchain. They might have heard of Bitcoin somewhere, sometime but don’t really know anything about it. Isn’t it some sort of a digital currency, they’ll ask.

Don’t be like them.

The age of blockchain

The world is going to change the way it acts: how financial institutions work, how organizations conduct business, or how governments govern. Everything is going to change, all because of blockchains. In fact, the change has already begun.

Blockchain is a digital distributed ledger of transactions which are maintained chronologically and publicly across an entire network in clusters called blocks. Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies (like Ethereum or Ripple) are built atop this foundational technology. Think of blockchains as the new internet and the new trust protocol. If information is available with everyone, no one needs an authority to stamp authenticity. The trust on transactions, identity, or assets comes intrinsically on a blockchain.

Cryptocurrencies are rad

Although blockchain finds applications in almost any real world scenario, the first and foremost use case of the technology is being seen in cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin, the world’s most popular cryptocurrency, is just 8 years old. At the moment of writing this article, 1 Bitcoin = $2,760. From January 2017 to June 2017, the price has increased more than 2.7 times. No other instrument offers such kind of return in such a short span of time.

Another popular cryptocurrency, which is taking Bitcoin for a run, is Ethereum. At the moment of writing this article, 1 ETH = $255. From January 2017 to June 2017, the price has increased more than 30 times. Be it for short-term or long-term, trading in cryptocurrencies is the new trend where people are making tons of money.

The total market capitalization of cryptocurrencies now exceeds $100 billion, and that figure is probably going to double itself every few months. Interesting fact: a Norwegian man invested $27 in Bitcoin in 2009 and the invested value became $886,000 in 2013. Imagine!

Trading in cryptocurrencies

But how do you really trade in cryptocurrencies? To get hold of some Bitcoins (BTC) or Ethers (ETH) or Ripples (XRP), you will need an exchange that accepts your old, boring fiat currency and converts them into new, exciting cryptocurrency mentioned before. A cryptocurrency exchange offers the platform where people can buy, sell and trade in various cryptocurrency markets.

Taking the form of a complete investment instrument, there arise speculations, analyses, trends, forecasts and bets as part of this exhilarating new domain. Cryptocurrencies are being traded at a faster rate than ever before, with new exchanges coming up in different parts of the globe every single day. But this is just the start. The entire concept of a cryptocurrency is to break all barriers and establish a new world order where transferring money and making payments should not take 2–3 days, but just 2–3 seconds.