So this is going to be a beginners guide to crypto and my experience in getting into the crypto world.

What's crypto?

Basically, crypto is just public information. In conventional methods, there are a few centralized entities like Banks etc which hold information privately. Crypto or blockchain to be specific was bought into the picture to solve the problem.

To sum it up, all your information is kept on a public digital ledger called blockchain which is made up of blocks of your information in a chain.

What is the benefit of this?

So imagine this, you have a ledger which keeps track of all transactions between you and your friends. All your friends have a copy of the ledger and keeps track of everyone's transactions. Now your friend might try to get his way and remove a few entries off of his ledger. But you have the entries they removed and can cross check it with other friends ledger and can catch them in the act.

Now imagine the same but at a global level. Blockchain is a chain of multiple transactions and all these transactions are having multiple copies all over the world. Even if an attacker tries to get his way and gets successful in modifying one block, there still are millions of blocks worldwide to modify the info on. This way you know your data has 100% integrity.

The most popular reason why crypto is getting heat is transparency. There is a 100% transparency in moving of funds.

Ok, I'm convinced, how do I begin?

Before making any financial decision, make sure you know what you're doing, I'm no crypto "guru" nor I am trying to become one, I'm just sharing what I know.

So, there are quite a few ways you can start. As an artist you can start by minting your artwork as NFT (Non-Fungible Tokens) here is a small video to give you an idea of what it is.

As a developer, you can explore smart contracts. I have been exporing them for a while now and boy oh boy they are fun!

Smart Contracts

Smart contracts as the name suggests are contracts which are smart. Let's take an example. Let's assume you and your friend made a bet on winner of the next Basketball game. Both of the parties have a fair chance of refusing their word and not completing the bet. Now here blockchain comes into play. You can code a smart contract on the condition if one team wins then the money goes to corresponding player and vice versa. Now your money can be put on the contract and the smart contract can be put on blockchain. Now as the result is declared, the smart contract will automatically transfer corresponding funds to the concerned person.

Other blockchain examples are DeFi, DAOs etc. There's just a lot to dive in for a single person.