Steemit Crypto Academy Season 4 Beginners' course - Homework Post for Task 3 Genesis Block

What is a Cryptocurrency?

Cryptocurrency is an advanced resource intended to function as a mechanism of trade. It uses cryptography for security purposes and to control the creation of additional units of the currency. As such, it is more resistant to hackers and less prone to fraudulent transactions.

Since the creation and popularity of Bitcoin (BTC), over 1500 cryptocurrencies (alternative coins) have been created, with varying degrees of success. While Bitcoin has seen record-breaking highs, it has also come under greater scrutiny as hacks have increased. Some are still actively being developed, but others have fallen into the “dead” category.

What is Cryptography and how does it make cryptocurrencies secure?

Cryptography is the process of encrypting messages or documents in order to prevent unintended readers from accessing sensitive information. This is done using encryption algorithms and mathematical methods. Cryptography ensures online data privacy, security, and integrity in a network or computer system. It uses a set of techniques where each sender has a key to encrypt messages and send it over the internet to a recipient who can decode it with his/her key.
In the case of cryptocurrencies, cryptography helps make transactions secure for parties in a system because they use public-key cryptography that ensures that no one else can decrypt their messages without knowing their keys. Cryptography is one of the most important features in cryptocurrencies and the Internet today. Its presence ensures secured transactions and ownership of private keys through code that runs on computers and mobile devices around the world.

How it works?

Cryptography is the process of transferring information securely over insecure channels. For secure communication, cryptography depends on mathematical functions with properties that are very difficult to discover with methods that are easy to check. Cryptography also uses keys that are considered hard to find or guess. Cryptography can be used to encrypt data or an entire communications channel, often both. Symmetric key encryption, which is shared-key encryption, has the same key for both encrypting and decrypting the data. Asymmetric key encryption uses two different keys for encryption and decryption.

Two types of cryptographies; Private and public key cryptography

Private key cryptography uses a single key that is kept secret and public key cryptography uses a set of two keys. The two keys are related, with one used to encrypt data and the other used to decrypt it. Public-key cryptography is a process that uses a pair of keys to encrypt and decrypt digital information. The first key, called the public key, is designed for distribution and distribution means that anyone can use it to encrypt data. The second key, known as the private key, must be kept secret to ensure confidentiality through encryption. Cryptography also protects the integrity of information by multiplying access among multiple private keys instead of storing all information on a single server or other centralized location for readability.

What could happen in absence of cryptography?

Cryptography is important in cryptocurrency because it allows people to make transactions safely without their personal information being leaked or stolen. In the past, when security wasn't a high priority in most systems, hackers could access databases containing private information and use this data for identity theft or other crimes. Encryption took care of this problem by ensuring that all user data was protected from prying eyes before it got into databases.

Explore the Steem Genesis Block and Sign in as proof of completion.

Steem genesis block is explored using the SteemWorld.org
Here the Block details could be viewed and Exported in the JSON format. Clicking on the Export button downloaded a file Named "steem-block-1.json"
This Json file contained the information listed in the Beautified Version of .JSON file

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Also to signin to i visited Steemworld page and clicked on the sign in button, i was shown a form that asked for the user name and the Private posting key of my account.

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And for the block exploring below is the Screenshot which contain labeling, exploration of items and proof of Me singing in:

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