Cryptocurrency is a form of electronic currency that relies on cryptography to regulate several of its functions, such as value and counterfeit prevention. The most famous form of cryptocurrency is the BitCoin, which launched in 2009 and is now accepted in a growing number of stores as a valid form of currency. Transactions are documented in a publicly accessible peer to peer distributed timestamp server, meaning that everyone has access to an encrypted chronological record of all transactions in the community and currency cannot be duplicated or double-spent.

Cryptocurrencies have a limited supply, which prevents inflation but renders them susceptible to forms of exploitation, such as speculation.

The idea of cryptocurreny was first mooted by Wei Dai in 1998.