This document provides an overview of cryptocurrency, including: 1) It discusses what cryptocurrency is, how it works using cryptography and blockchain technology, and examples like Bitcoin. 2) It then covers topics like the history and evolution of cryptocurrencies, how they are used in darknet markets, and academic studies being conducted. 3) Finally, it outlines some of the key characteristics of cryptocurrencies that differentiate them from traditional currencies, as well as advantages like anonymity and disadvantages like volatility.

1. TOPIC PAGE NO.
 CRYPTOCURRENCY (1)
 BITCOIN (2)
 INDIAN CRYPTOCURRENCY (3)
 CRYPTOCURRENCY WORK (4)
 DARKNET MARKET (7)
 STUDIES (7)
 ANATOMY OF CRYPTOCURRENCY (8)
 BLOCKING OF THE BLOCK CHAIN (10)
 HISTORY (11)
 ADVANTAGES OF CRYPTOCURRENCY (12)
 DISADVANTAGES OF CRYPTOCURRENCY (13)

2. Cryptocurrency
What is a cryptocurrency?
Cryptocurrency is a formof digital money that is designed to be secure and, in
many cases, anonymous.
Itis a currency associated with the internet that uses cryptography, theprocess of
converting legible information into an almost uncrackablecode, to track
purchases and transfers.
Cryptography was born outof the need for securecommunication in the Second
World War. Ithas evolved in the digital era with elements of mathematical
theory and computer science to become a way to securecommunications,
information and money online.

3. The list of cryptocurrency according to the year 2009 to 2017.
Bitcoin, litecoin, Namecoin, Swiftcoin, Teracoin, Peercoin, Dogecoin, Emercoin,
Gridcoin, omni, primecoin, Ripple, Auroracoin, Blackcoin, Burstcoin, Coinye, Dash,
Digitalnote , Mazacoin, Monero, Nem, Nxt,potcoin, Synerio-AMP, Titcoin,
Vertcoin, Ethereum, Etherium Classic, IOTA, SixEleven, Decred, Waves Platform,
Zcash,Ark Ecosystem, Bitcoin Cash, Ubiq etc.
The first cryptocurrency was bitcoin, which was created in 2009 and is still the
best known. Therehas been a proliferation of crypto currencies in the past
decade and there are now morethan 900 available on the internet.
What is bit coin?
A digital currency, used to make payments of any value without fees. Itruns on
the blockchain, a decentralised ledger kept running by “miners” whosepowerful
computers crunch transactions and are rewarded in bitcoins.
SatoshiNakamoto, a secretiveinternet user, invented bitcoin in 2008 beforeit
went online in 2009.

4. India may launch its own cryptocurrency
The Indian governmentis reportedly considering introducing its own digital
cryptocurrency, similar to bitcoin. With the rising popularity of bitcoin in all
financial markets, the government is now looking at a government-issued digital
currency. India’s centralbank believes that digital currencies are susceptibleto
misuse, and hence choseto issueone themselves. This cryptocurrency willfall
under the domain of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI).
According to Business Standard, the cryptocurrencywill be code-
named ‘Lakshmi’ — after the Goddess ofwealth. If introduced, Lakshmi should
run on an implementation of the blockchain technology used by Bitcoin itself.
What is INRFalcon?
INRFalcon is a smart contractbuilt on the Ethereum platform. Itis an intermediary
currency that combines the benefits of cryptocurrency and thestability of fiat (i.e.
any government issued currency).
INRFalcon is a closed cryptocurrency existing only on ThroughBit, it cannot be
sent to any other wallet. Ithas to be noted that-
 1 Indian Rupee falcon (INRF) = 1 Indian Rupee (INR)

5. How cryptocurrency works?
The Cryptocurrency Basics
Public Ledgers: All confirmed transactions fromthe start of a cryptocurrency’s
creation are stored in a public ledger. The identities of the coin owners are
encrypted, and the systemuses other cryptographic techniques to ensurethe
legitimacy of record keeping. The ledger ensures that corresponding “digital
wallets” can calculate an accurate spendable balance. Also, new transactions can
be checked to ensure that each transaction uses only coins currently owned by
the spender. Bitcoin calls this public ledger a “transaction block chain.”
(1) To be able to send money, you haveto set up a wallet. The accountand the
idea behind it are similar to a well-known online bank account. You can see your
balance, choosean amount you want to transfer, enter the recipient’s details and
click ‘Send’.
(2) After you click ‘Send’, a messagewith your and recipient’s details will be sent
to a particular cryptocurrency network. This prevents theft, and previously
mentioned, double spending.
(3) If you have an online bank account then you know that before you make a
transfer or a payment, you have entered a PINcode or use a digital security key.
Same thing works for cryptocurrency–underneath a message, you haveto
include your signature.
Except, the signatureis not based on handwriting but a mathematical formula.
The math behind a signaturecomes fromthe word ‘cryptography’ –an art of
hiding. Normally used to hide secret messages, butin transferring
cryptocurrencies is used to provethe signature’s authenticity. Clever, right?
What’s more – each user has a private key which is used to encryptthe signature!

6. (4) All confirmed transactions fromthe beginning of cryptocurrency arestored in
a public ledger. The ledger ensures the accurate spendablebalance, and that
each transaction uses only coins that already belong to the spender. Again, that’s
all to avoid theft and double spending.
Transactions: A transfer of funds between two digital wallets is called a
transaction. That transaction gets submitted to a public ledger and awaits
confirmation. When a transaction is made, wallets usean encrypted electronic
signature(an encrypted piece of data called a cryptographic signature) to provide
a mathematical proof that the transaction is coming fromthe owner of the wallet.
The confirmation process takes a bit of time (ten minutes for bitcoin) while
“miners” mine (ie. confirmtransactions and add them to the public ledger).
Mining: In simpleterms, mining is the process of confirming transactions and
adding them to a public ledger. In order to add a transaction to the ledger, the
“miner” mustsolve an increasingly-complexcomputationalproblem (sortof like a
mathematical puzzle). Mining is open source, so anyonecan confirmthe
transaction. The first “miner” to solvethe puzzle adds a “block” of transactions to
the ledger. The way in which transactions, blocks, and the public blockchain
ledger work together ensures that no one individual can easily add or change a
block at will. Once a block is added to the ledger, all correlating transactions are
permanent and a small transaction fee is added to the miner’s wallet (along with
newly created coins). The mining process is what gives value to the coins and is
known as a proof-of-worksystem.

8. DARKNET MARKET
Cryptocurrency is also used in controversialsettings in the form of online black
markets, such as Silk Road. The original Silk Road was shutdown in October 2013
and there have been two more versions in use since then; the currentversion
being Silk Road 3.0. The successfulformatof Silk Road has been widely used in
online dark markets, which has led to a subsequentdecentralization of the online
dark market. In the year following the initial shutdown of Silk Road, the number
of prominent dark markets increased fromfour to twelve, while the amount of
drug listings increased from18,000 to 32,000.
Darknetmarkets present growing
challenges in regard to legality. Bitcoins and other forms of cryptocurrency used
in dark markets are not clearly or legally classified in almost all parts of the world.
In the U.S., bitcoins are labelled as "virtualassets". This typeof ambiguous
classification puts mounting pressureon law enforcement agencies around the
world to adapt to the shifting drug trade of dark markets.
STUDIES
In September 2015, theestablishment of the peer-reviewed academic journal
Ledger (ISSN2379-5980) wasannounced. Itwillcover studies of cryptocurrencies
and related technologies, and is published by the University of Pittsburgh. The
journalencourages authors to digitally sign a file hash of submitted papers, which
will then be timestamped into the bitcoin blockchain. Authors arealso asked to
include a personalbitcoin address in the firstpage of their papers.

9. The Anatomy of Cryptocurrency
Although there can be exceptions to the rule, there are a number of
factors (beyond the basics above) that make cryptocurrency so differentfrom
the financial systems of the past:
Adaptive Scaling: Adaptivescaling essentially means that cryptocurrencies are
built with a number of measures to ensurethat they will work well in both large
or small scales.
Adaptive Scaling Example: Bitcoin is programmed to allow for one transaction
block to be mined approximately every ten minutes. The algorithm adjusts after
every 2016 blocks (theoretically, that’s every two weeks) to get easier or harder
based on how long it actually took for those 2016 blocks to be mined. So if it only
took 13 days for the network to mine 2016 blocks, thatmeans it’s too easy to
mine, so the difficulty increases. However, if it takes 15 days for the network to
mine 2016 blocks, thatshows thatit’s too hard to mind, so the difficulty
decreases.
A number of other measures are included in digital coins to allow for adaptive
scaling including limiting the supply overtime (to create scarcity) and reducing the
reward for mining as moretotal coins aremined.
Cryptographic: Cryptocurrency usesa systemof cryptography (AKA encryption) to
control the creation of coins and to verify transactions.
Decentralized: Mostcurrencies in circulation are controlled by a centralized
government, and thus their creation can be regulated by a third party.
Cryptocurrency’screation and transactions areopen source, controlled by code,
and rely on “peer-to-peer” networks. Thereis no single entity that can affect the
currency.
Digital: Traditional currency is defined by a physicalobject (USD representing gold
for example), but cryptocurrency is alldigital. Digital coins are stored in digital
wallets and transferred digitally to other peoples’ digital wallets. No physical
object ever exists.

10. OpenSource: Cryptocurrencies aretypically open source. That means that
developers can create APIs withoutpaying a fee and anyonecan use or join the
network.
Proof-of-work: Mostcryptocurrencies usea proof-of-work system. A proof-of-
work schemeuses a hard-to-computebut easy-to-verify computationalpuzzleto
limit exploitation of cryptocurrency mining. Essentially, it’s like a really hard to
solve“catpcha” that requires lots of computing power. NOTE: Other systems like
proof-of-work (such as proof-of-stake) arealso used.
Pseudonymity: Owners of cryptocurrency keep their digital coins in an encrypted
digital wallet. A coin-holder’s identification is stored in an encrypted address that
they have controlover – it is not attached to a person’s identity. The connection
between you and your coins is pseudonymous rather than anonymous as ledgers
are open to the public (and thus, the ledgers could be used to glean information
about groups of individuals in the network).
Value: For something to be an effective currency, it has to havevalue.
The US dollar used to represent actual gold. The gold was scarceand required
work to mine and refine, so the scarcity and work gavethe gold value. This, in
turn, gave the US dollar value.

12. HISTORY
In 1998, WeiDai published a description of "b-money", an anonymous,
distributed electronic cash system. Shortly thereafter, Nick Szabo created "bit
gold".[20]
Like bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies thatwould follow it, bit gold
was an electronic currency systemwhich required users to complete a proof of
work function with solutions being cryptographically. A currency systembased
on a reusable proof of work was later created by Hal Finney who followed the
work of Dai and Szabo.
The firstcryptocurrency was created in 2009 by
SATOSHI NAKAMOTO. Itused SHA-256, a cryptographic hash function. In April
2011, Namecoin was created as an attempt at forming a decentralized DNS,
which would make internet censorship very difficult. Soon after, in October
2011, Litecoin was released. Itwas the firstsuccessfulcryptocurrency to use
scryptas its hash function instead of SHA-256. Another notable
cryptocurrency, Peercoin was thefirstto usea proof-of-work/proof-of-stake
hybrid.[22]
IOTA was thefirstcryptocurrency notbased on a blockchain, and
instead uses the Tangle. Many other cryptocurrencies havebeen created
though few have been successful, as they have broughtlittle in the way of
technical innovation.

13. What are the advantages of cryptocurrency?
Digital currency maintains its users complete anonymity. When you make a
purchasewith traditional money your personalinformation is attached to each
and every transaction which can be used to track you and take note of your
purchases. Butcryptocurrency transactions carryno personalinformation.
Cryptocurrencies aren'tdirectly linked to the laws, rules or regulations of any
government, corporation or bank. Hence, the interest rates, fees and
surcharges thatyou may haveto pay on your bank account or credit card do
not effect your transactions or cryptocurrency in any manner.
Accounts that hold traditional currency can be garnished or frozen completely.
cryptocurrencies, on the other hand, are not stored in traditional banks.
 Fraud-cryptocurrency aredigital and cannotbe counterfeited as with
credit card chargebacks.
 Identity theft
 Immediate settlement
 Access to everyone
 Lower fees

14. Disadvantages of cryptocurrency?
Cryptocurrencies aredifficult for people to understand, and the mechanics of
key management confusepeople, which means that many people have
purchased cryptocurrencies and left them in the custody of others, only to lose
them to insider theft or hackers. The cryptocurrency spaceis new, disruptive,
and subjectto a lot of pump and dump behaviors similar to penny stocks.
Because nobody knows whatcurrencies will be adopted at scale, and there is
so much uncertainty aboutwhat people will use them for, all cryptocurrencies
are extremely volatile relative to traditional fiat currencies.
 Bitcoins are not widely accepted.
 Wallet can be lost, when hard drive crash or when we loosedevice.
 Risk of unknown technical flaws.