Experts answer cryptocurrency questions in the “Cryptocurrency 101” webinar

Do you have any questions about cryptocurrencies?

Industry experts answered questions from the general public about digital currencies in the Newsday webinar “Crypto101”, which was released online Thursday.

“This is a technology I believe is part of a better Internet foundation,” panelist Craig Rudess, co-founder of the Long Island Blockchain Council, said during the event. David Sacco, a practitioner of financial economics at the University of New Haven, was also a panelist.

Newsday financial writer Ken Shakta and anchor Faith Jesse moderated.

Cryptocurrencies are high-risk financial assets that could one day develop into real currencies, Sacco said.

According to Investopedia, “Cryptocurrencies are a form of digital assets based on networks distributed across a large number of computers. This decentralized structure allows them to exist outside the control of governments and central authorities.” ..

Created in 2009, Bitcoin was the first blockchain-based cryptocurrency and is still the most popular.

In response to inquiries about how blockchain works, Rudes said the technology is designed to reward good behavior and penalize bad behavior.

“So the whole network begins to dominate itself in this way,” he said.

Bitcoin’s “miners” are running computer applications whose sole task is to solve complex math problems, Rudes said. Operators whose computers follow the rules will be rewarded with Bitcoin “every 10 minutes when a new block is created”.

Asked how the government and central banks handle cryptocurrencies, Sacco said the government was interested in taxation and illegal transactions.

“The government also wants to track and monitor the economy because it has a lot of control over its economy through monetary policy,” he said. He said cryptocurrencies could pose a threat to these efforts, so the government is also trying to figure out how cryptocurrencies affect their ability to control the economy.

According to Sacco, the investment world can be divided into two categories: investment, which usually means stability and security, and speculation, which involves taking more risk.

He said cryptocurrencies fall into the latter category.

“For the average investor, I would say I step carefully and carefully. Invest only the amount you are willing to lose,” he said.

According to Sacco, it will take a long time for cryptocurrencies to become widely used.

“We’ve talked about the dollar about the value of Bitcoin, probably not yet,” he said.