What Is Crypto, Anyway?

On this very website, we call ourselves The Crypto Christian. But what does that mean, exactly?

First and foremost, our goal as believers is to introduce fellow Christians to this world-changing technology, so that together, we can all do the Lord’s work, spread the Gospel, and use our blessings for God's Kingdom. 

But what does that “Crypto” part mean? Deriving from the Greek word for “hidden”, crypto as a prefix can mean many things. However, in this context, it is typically shorthand for the term “Cryptocurrency.”

A cryptocurrency is a digital asset intended to be used as money, which is secured by cryptography.

There’s that “crypto” prefix again – cryptography is the science of sending secret messages from one person to another without a malicious actor being able to intercept the message. But it’s simpler to think of cryptography as advanced math.

Back to cryptocurrencies.

What is that all about? The original cryptocurrency, which started off the whole party, is Bitcoin. Satoshi Nakamoto, the unknown inventor of Bitcoin, introduced his masterwork with the following timeless words:

I've been working on a new electronic cash system that's fully peer-to-peer, with no trusted third party.

Similarly, the first sentence of the Bitcoin white paper (which describes the technical working of Bitcoin) uses the following description in its abstract:

A purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution.

So what do we get from all of that? Satoshi Nakamoto’s goal was to replace trusted third-party financial institutions with a trust-less technology. That is, a network of people running the same software, which doesn't require anyone to trust anyone else in the network. 

This seems impossible, right?

How can anyone in the network trust everyone else in the network at the same time?

As a wise man once said: “Trust, but Verify.”

The Bitcoin network is trustworthy because any user can verify the activity taking place on the network at any time, as well as all of the historical activity. 

Okay so that’s Bitcoin, but what about all these other cryptocurrencies? 

Well therein lies the problem with the term “cryptocurrency.” Most other digital assets that fall under the umbrella of “crypto” are not trying to be digital money at all. In fact, most advocates in the industry prefer to use the term “Digital Asset” to more accurately describe all of the technologies in the space. 

So should we start using the term Digital Asset now? It’s probably too late to change the terminology most folks are familiar with when we discuss these technologies. Just like it’s a little too late to think of searching for something on the internet as anything other than “Googling.” 

So, to sum up: "Crypto" is the catch-all term used to describe Bitcoin and all other digital assets, which we’ve come to collectively describe as cryptocurrencies.

A "cryptocurrency" is a technology that uses cryptography to secure a digital asset attempting to be used as money.

And "cryptography" is just one type of super advanced math. From our perspective, there’s Bitcoin, and there’s everything else, but that’s a conversation for another day.