Why trade cryptocurrencies?

What are Cryptocurrencies?

Cryptocurrencies are ‘intangible commodities’, decentralized in nature which means that their production is not subject to governmental or banking order. Similar to conventional commodities like gold or oil, Cryptocurrencies are digitally ‘mined’ and their production is gradually decreased to control the amount in circulation. Since 2009 when Bitcoin was introduced, Cryptocurrencies are becoming more popular among investors and traders.

Cryptocurrency values fluctuate solely based on supply and demand owed to their decentralized nature.
Volatility on Cryptocurrencies is higher compared to other asset classes, hence higher opportunities for investors.
Trading Cryptocurrencies with IronFX allows you to speculate on the upside (Buy) or the downside (Sell) movement.
IronFX gives you the opportunity to trade on Bitcoin and Ethereum without the need of owning a Digital Currency wallet, which is required in conventional cryptocurrency transactions.

Bitcoin

Trade the world's most acclaimed cryptocurrency with IronFX. Developed in 2009 by a person (or a group of people) with the allies of Satoshi Nakamoto, Bitcoin is the world's first and most valuable cryptocurrency. Unlike centralized currencies controlled by the central bank, Bitcoin’s supply is finite. Specifically, only 21 million Bitcoins can ever come to existence, which means that its value is subject to supply and demand. Its volatile nature and high daily trading volume make it a very attractive trading instrument. Bitcoin is gaining popularity as its mining increases, making it a new favourite asset among many traders.

Ethereum

First proposed in 2013 and released in 2015, Ethereum is a blockchain-based platform, which uses Ether as its value token. The Ethereum network was originally developed by Vitalik Buterin to improve Bitcoin’s scripting language which does not allow application development, but since agreement was never reached, Ethereum was rather launched as an independent blockchain-based platform. Similar to Bitcoin, Ethereum is decentralized and Ether’s production is capped; yet, Ether’s capacity is larger and its mining can happen more frequently. Specifically, 18 million Ether tokens can be mined per year and no more than one token can be mined per 12 seconds approximately. Similar to most cryptocurrencies, Ethereum’s nature is volatile, which often raises great opportunities for investors.

Litecoin

Often referred to as the most successful clone of Bitcoin, Litecoin was released by Charlie Lee as a fork of the original Cryptocurrency that uses a slightly altered source code. Since its release in 2011, Litecoin has gained popularity and became a more affordable alternative to Bitcoin, verifying its developer’s aspiration to make Litecoin the ‘Silver to Bitcoin’s Gold’.

1 Litecoin can be mined every 2.5 minutes and given that the cryptocurrency’s technological algorithm remains unchanged, only a total of 84 million Litecoins can ever be mined. Given that Litecoin’s maximum volume and capacity is 4 times higher than Bitcoin’s, the two Cryptocurrencies are expected to reach scarcity at about the same time in the future. Litecoin’s chart has lately been very volatile, following the founder’s decision to sell all of the Litecoins in his possession, arguing that his statements around the Cryptocurrency were critically influencing the charts, which created conflict of interest.

Ripple

Ripple is more than just a Cryptocurrency. The Ripple technology acts as a global, digital settlement network, of which the development was driven by the ever-increasing demand for cross-border payments and the inconvenience caused when it comes to transactions between different payment systems. Unlike conventional bank-to-bank transactions that are time consuming, expensive and inefficient, Ripple transactions are hassle free, as settlement time can be as low as 5 seconds and conversion fee is eliminated since no currency exchange takes place.

Unlike the majority of Cryptocurrencies, Ripple is not decentralized. In contrast, the Ripple network bridges centralized fiat currencies and even Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ether. Ripple coins cannot be mined. Instead, the amount in circulation is controlled by the ‘Ripple’ company, which means that volatility can be caused for reasons other than just supply and demand.

Many investors expect the Ripple technology to revolutionize the way global transactions take place, which explains why Ripple’s popularity has dramatically grown.

ADA

ADA is the native coin of Cardano. Charles Hoskinson, co-founder of Ethereum, established ADA when he collaborated with the Cardano Foundation in 2015. This digital cash represents the future of money, making possible fast, direct transfers that are guaranteed to be secure by the use of cryptography. This is the first blockchain project to be developed from a scientific philosophy, and the only one to be designed and built by a global team of leading academics and engineers. It is essential that the technology is secure, flexible and scalable for use by many millions of users. Consequently, considerable thought and care, as well as informed design decisions have been devoted to the project from some of the leading experts in their fields. The scientific rigor applied to mission-critical systems such as aerospace and banking has been brought to the field of cryptocurrencies, with a high assurance implementation.

A major innovation of Cardano is that it will balance the needs of users with those of regulators, and in doing so it will combine privacy with regulation. The vision for Cardano is that its new style of regulated computing will bring greater financial inclusion by providing open access for all into fair financial services.