The ABCs of Crypto Report
May 2023 - Cointelegraph Research
blockchain, crypto, nft, defi, bitcoin, research,
Everyone in the blockchain world has the experience of trying to explain to “no-coiners” why Bitcoin or cryptocurrencies are important. Usually, this ends up with a lengthy explanation that talks about each individual’s experiences and reasons for being part of the cryptoverse, decentralized finance (DeFi), trading digital art through nonfungible tokens (NFTs), trading, separation of money and state and the list can go on. Often, what is the interest of one person is not the reason for someone else to start owning crypto. This is why we created this ABCs guide to DeFi and NFTs as a primer to help onboard that “next billion users.”
This ABCs of Crypto report focuses on two significant areas of interest to the general public — DeFi and NFTs — as these often get the most amount of attention. They are also the building blocks that help to understand the expansive areas of the changing blockchain landscape, like social finance (SoFi), game finance (GameFi), decentralized identification, and the metaverse.
What started as a revolution of decades of information technology discoveries and cypherpunk roots blossomed into Bitcoin and sparked the “Blockchain Revolution.” Today, if we do not remember our history, it is easy to forget the reasons behind why all of this was started. This report is meant as a way to give a high-level overview of the technology that went into Bitcoin, start the conversation on why anyone should care about it, and how Bitcoin spurred on the rest of what is referred to as the blockchain or Web3 industry as we know it today.