Blockchain technology has enables a new world of cryptocurrencies that is on 24/7, never sleeping. Unlike anything we have ever seen before, these markets are fostering the incubation of technologies that are radically changing the way we live our daily lives in this brave new world. What you can expect from this article is curation of educational links to blockchain and cryptocurrency material that anybody can learn from.

As of March 7th, 2018 in the morning EST the top 10 cryptocurrency coins/tokens by market cap are as pictured in the image, straight from CoinMarketCap.

My major reason for bringing you this piece of content today is because more and more large institutions continue to pile into the cryptocurrency space, working to take as much as the market share as they can. Not only that, exchanges are ‘profit-creation centers.’ Meaning, ANYBODY with access to an internet connection can sign up for these exchange accounts and trade cryptocurrencies.

Unfortunately, the average person does not stand a chance against these volatile, choppy markets — specially when Wall Street already has high-frequency trading software that absolutely nobody in crypto has at this point. My goal is to help provide you with the necessary resources for you to educate yourself with. I’m not here to educate you, but to make it easier to discover the resources required to learn about this space.

Beginning Primers on Blockchain Tech and Cryptocurrencies

Before you go diving into each one of the different types of blockchains via the guides below, make sure you have a general understanding of the topics below and/or feel free to scan the resources:

Top 11 Blockchains by Market Cap & Guides to Understanding

After having a look through the resources above or already being ready to dive into each blockchain, here are beginner guides from reputable sources to help you learn what each blockchain network is about:

More Cryptocurrency and Blockchain Stories From CrowdConscious:

Taking Personal Responsibility Over Your Cryptocurrency

After you’ve learned about the cryptocurrency-specific blockchains listed above, you can dive into some of the deeper fundamentals of how to responsibly manage your own cryptocurrencies and deeper aspects of blockchain technology. This becomes increasingly important as the space grows because one thing blockchain technology does is puts personal responsibility on the individual user.

One of the core abilities of blockchain is to allow for new, innovative business models that take the intermediary out of the equation. For many, this enables a different sense of personal control over one’s wealth. For most others who already heavily rely on the intermediaries today, this becomes a major pitfall because they are used to relying on the intermediary to protect them in case of a problem, but do not have that protection in the world of cryptocurrencies.

For example, federal bank accounts are FDIC insured. Up to $250,000 and more than that in some cases. So if, for instance, if I have $250k in my bank account and something happens to it, the bank will foot the bill. This becomes a problem because banks in the US were bailed out by taxpayer money. If banks have security issues or are improperly managing their customer’s money, then the taxpayers will just fix the problem. You know, the sort of snowball that can lead to a major recession.

With Bitcoin and most other cryptocurrencies, your desktop wallet address is the bank account and your private key is pure access to that account. Hence, the personal responsibility. Hackers are everywhere and it’s in your best interest to learn how to secure your own crypto and for to help you do that, here are some helpful resources:

How to Store Your Bitcoins, by CoinDesk

This piece breaks down online, mobile, hardware and paper wallet methods of storing your Bitcoin. These methods will also apply to various other cryptographic coins — the article helps you understand the importance of each method of storage.

There are well over 500 blockchains in existence with their own cryptocurrency at the center. A few of those blockchains even have dual-token models like NEO-GAS network.

5 Weak Points Of Blockchain Technology, by BlockGeeks

Blockchain tech is a public prototype, at least any that are currently accessible by anyone in the public. Ethereum and Bitcoin are the best examples of a publicly accessible blockchain for everybody. When that happens, competitors have a chance to take advantage of the weak points of certain blockchains. For instance, Bitcoin network was having spammed transactions for sometime which caused fees to increase because the transactions were filling blocks up too quickly from the data from the signatures. Creations such as the Schnorr Signature allows for the ‘batch’ storage of signatures, taking up less data and allowing for more transactions per block, for instance.

Smart contracts work in a similar fashion as the vending machine, except between two human beings. This allows us to transact without trust involved, relying on the technology of smart contracts to properly mediate the transaction.

2017 was the year of the Ethereum ICO boom. With more than $6 billion raised in 2017 and already over $1.1b raised in 2018 as of the end of February, Initial Coin Offerings are on the map of every government official right now. Learn about them and what the implications are.

Best Cryptocurrency Exchanges: The Ultimate Guide, by BlockGeeks

A brief guide of cryptocurrency exchanges that has likely changed in the past year. At the end of this article, you can also find quite a few exchange listings for exchanges I used in the space if you’d like to check them out. They are referral links so it does help me to continue creating helpful content when you sign up while also gaining access to a more trusted resource.

What Are Dapps? The New Decentralized Future, by BlockGeeks

Dapps or Decentralized Applications are applications on a decentralized blockchain network. Similar to the applications we know today, Dapps are made specifically with the ability of that blockchain’s coin/token(s) to interact with the application.

How are blockchains governed? Do tokens equal votes? Or hash power?

2017 was quite possibly the ‘year of high-fees’ across many blockchains. Last year helped bring cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology mainstream and, with the exposure, comes the critics. Some blockchains claim they are decentralized while they are actually centrally managed to the point of pretty much being a centralized network. What do they need to lower fees and serve a global economy?

In Closing

I hope you found this piece of content useful or can share it with your network to help others learn. I have been finding it harder and harder to bust out content every couple days or even weekly at this point — something plenty of content creators face when they have been creating content for a while. I never found my ‘style’ of writing aside from being passionate about presenting the community with resources, tools and thought-provoking coverage of specific projects.

Writing articles also doesn’t bring in much money at all besides when my readers register for the exchanges and resource links below. Please let me know in the comments if you find this content valuable so I can gather some feedback on what to continue producing for the blockchain/cryptocurrency community.

Thank you all for giving me a chance to get into your mind. Never in my life would I have thought my blog channel would reach over 3,400 readers, but here we are. Wouldn’t have been able to make it this far without YOU, my motivation.