Crypto: The dream that challenges the system.

For the financial market, but for the market in general, Trump's second term is a period full of satisfaction and growth, don't you think? Between wars, retaliation, closures, and secret deals, how can one not be happy and full of money? 2026 is looking like a great year...

Since the legendary Trump came to power in 2025, financial markets have been in constant turmoil, and it's difficult even to plan anything, given that a lasting peace is only a distant mirage. For now, we are navigating by sight and waiting for better times. It is no coincidence that commodities like gold and silver had the surge they did in 2025. When people are afraid, they always take refuge in safe havens, with calm seas and favorable weather.

Among all the assets that have recorded losses in the market, there is one small part that hasn't just seen losses, but a volatility that seemed determined to wipe it off the map (though lately, it seems to be trying to raise its head again). It is that part of the financial market that can create millionaires or homeless people within a few weeks. Of course, you have to position yourself well and exit at the right moment, but this tiny slice of the market can truly give great satisfaction if the right amount of money flows in. I’m talking about the cryptocurrency market... a market in which I invested something in 2024, took nothing but punches to the face in 2025, and understood the definition of resignation in 2026. But that’s another story.

Why am I talking about it? Because, aside from the slaps taken by yours truly, I find this universe very fascinating, as it could truly be the future of the economy, solving structural problems that this world has and cannot change.

Therefore, this post will be dedicated to crypto. Happy reading.

What is a Crypto?

A cryptocurrency is a form of digital or virtual currency. "Well, Euros are 'digital' too, since when I do a wire transfer, I don't touch the money with my hands! What makes these digital currencies so special!?"

That's not it! In our wallets, we still have banknotes and coins. A cryptocurrency has no physical form; it is a string of data protected by a digital key that you can store on a dedicated USB drive, which could technically be used to buy and sell.

This reasoning holds up on paper. In reality, the situation is quite different. As of today, in 2026, the possibilities of buying and selling goods using Bitcoin, for example, are very limited—almost non-existent. Sure, since Trump has been in power, banks and financial institutions are opening up to crypto, but it is a slow process. The latest updates speak of banks simply advising their investors to have crypto in their portfolios just to diversify their investment. It is merely speculative advice to exploit the volatility of crypto. No bank has yet introduced the possibility of making a wire transfer in crypto, for example.

The only companies moving in the direction of "crypto as a payment method" are Mastercard or PayPal, having integrated the ability to pay with Bitcoin. However, we are still at almost non-existent usage levels due to a near-total lack of acceptance of such digital currency. Almost no shops accept Crypto for payments, and almost no one has a hard wallet to store their cryptocurrencies.

Crypto differs from "fiat" currencies (like the dollar and euro, for example) also because they use cryptography to ensure transaction security, control the creation of new units, and verify the transfer of assets.

When you make a wire transfer, for example, all the data of the sender and receiver appears in the transaction. In theory, a hacker can enter the banking system, read the data, and do whatever they want. With crypto, when there is a movement of currency, advanced algorithms are used to protect the data and ensure that only the owner of a specific "private key" can spend their funds. With crypto, what a hacker would see is just a string of numbers and digits that they can neither modify nor crack to understand who the people involved are, making life damn hard for hackers.

Another big difference is how the cryptocurrency is produced. Unlike traditional currencies ("fiat" money like the Euro or the Dollar), cryptocurrencies are not issued by a central authority, such as a central bank or a government, which makes them theoretically immune to government interference or manipulation. This is the main point supporters use to back crypto: they are currencies of the people, for the people.

Since there is no central bank for crypto, control is carried out by a dense network of interconnected servers, controlled by non-governmental individuals, who automatically certify the legitimacy of transactions and store them.

This legitimacy and storage of transactions made with cryptocurrencies operate on networks based on blockchain technology. Now the question arises: what the heck is a blockchain?

How does the Blockchain work?

The blockchain can be imagined as a very long train: an infinite chain of wagons (blocks) that are sealed on average every ten minutes, in which all transactions related to a specific cryptocurrency are collected and stored. Because every cryptocurrency has its own Blockchain, which is its ledger. Each individual Blockchain is a world unto itself and does not communicate with others; to move from one to another, you need an 'exchange' (just like between different currencies).

The process of making a blockchain work is very complex.

Let’s say you own one Bitcoin and want to send it to someone. Why you would want to give tens of thousands of dollars to someone is not our business. The moment you want to send that Bitcoin, the order enters a waiting room (Mempool), where it will keep company with all the other pending transactions from others using Bitcoin. That waiting room is not the Blockchain. Think of that room as a train station platform and all the transactions as passengers waiting.

The goal of a transaction is to get on a wagon, meaning to enter a block of the chain. That wagon is operated by a group of people called MINERS. But it’s not just one miner managing the blockchain; it’s dozens of people. This is where it gets complicated.

ALL THE MINERS on the network open a block simultaneously, pulling transactions from the Mempool and trying to pack them into their block as quickly as possible. Practically, imagine a station with dozens of tracks occupied by as many wagons. Each Miner will forcibly take waiting passengers, trying to fill their own wagon.

Because each block has limited space (about 1MB), if the Mempool is crowded—meaning the platform is full—miners first choose the transactions that offer higher fees (the passengers who paid more for the trip). While the miner fills their block, they will also try to close it, as it is essential to find the right seal as quickly as possible through a complex calculation.

As soon as a miner manages to close their block (after about 10 minutes on average)—meaning they have filled the wagon and closed the doors—the block is published, validated by the network, and "glued" to the chain, making the transactions final. Thus, the wagon attaches to the rest of the train with the other wagons.

Once the block is sealed and added to the chain, the transfer of ownership has occurred: the recipient is the new owner of that BTC, and the operation is practically impossible to cancel. However, all transactions are public and searchable, ensuring transparency while maintaining pseudonymity thanks to cryptography.

Where did the idea of cryptocurrency come from?

Pre-Bitcoin.

It is often thought that Crypto technology was born with Bitcoin, because Bitcoin is the flagship of the entire cryptocurrency sector. The funny thing is that, like all things in the 21st century, what we think is original is just a modern copy of something created in the 20th century and buried by the sands of history.

The true beginning of Crypto is between the 80s and the 90s, the era of the Chicago Bulls, big hair, Eurodance, Michael Jackson, and computers and TVs as big as wardrobes.

eCash.

The 80s were the years of the birth of technology. During this period, the first attempts (failed or never taken off) at digital currency were born.

The first occurred in 1983 under the name "eCash." David Chaum invented an anonymous electronic money system based on cryptographic protocols. How did it work?

First, you had to go to the bank and convert your real dollars into digital "eCash" coins from your bank. Then, you had to send these coins to an online store. The store would send the coins to the bank to ensure they were authentic and not already spent. Finally, the bank credited real money to the store.

It was the foundation of modern cryptocurrencies. A beautiful idea, almost futuristic for the time... perhaps too much so.

In that period, e-commerce was in its infancy. People had just started trusting credit cards; the idea of a "cryptographic digital currency" seemed like science fiction or something for criminals.

eCash needed banks to cooperate to work. But banks were suspicious and did not look kindly on a system that guaranteed so much privacy to customers. Only one small American bank (Mark Twain Bank) actually adopted it.

If the company DigiCash (which controlled eCash) failed, the whole system collapsed. There was no network of "miners" to support it as there is today with Bitcoin.

The attempt failed, but it was a first step. We appreciate the gesture.

Cypherpunks.

The next chapter of a story yet to be written (as in 2026 we are still at the beginning) is dedicated to a group of cryptographers and activists called Cypherpunks.

The group officially formed in San Francisco around three key figures: Eric Hughes, Timothy C. May, and John Gilmore.

In 1993, Eric Hughes wrote the Cypherpunk Manifesto, which began with a phrase that has become legendary: "Privacy is necessary for a free society in the digital age... We Cypherpunks write code."

The idea was simple: the State will never give you privacy as a courtesy, so you have to take it for yourself using mathematics and cryptography.

For this group, privacy was necessary for a free society in the digital age, and the only way to guarantee it is cryptography. They were convinced that "code is law." If math protects your transaction, you don't need to trust a politician or a banker.

Already in the 90s, someone had understood that technology, especially if used against the "powerful," would allow for the privacy and freedom that was so dreamed of.

There was only one small problem: strong cryptography (the kind impossible to break) was considered by the U.S. government to be a weapon of war. A classic move by the government: when something cannot be controlled, it is made illegal. Think about the fact that everyone pays, but the State doesn't know how that money was spent because of cryptography. Not great for politics that wants to control everything and everyone.

In fact, the American government made it illegal to export cryptographic software outside the USA.

The group fought fiercely with legal blows until one of them, Phil Zimmermann, published the PGP software (to encrypt emails). Just imagine the panic the government had when they noticed that a guy had found a way to prevent the government itself from snooping into personal emails.

To avoid arrest, Zimmermann did something genius, using the tools the law provided: he printed the source code in a book and sent it abroad, since exporting weapons was illegal, but exporting books was protected by freedom of the press. The program was saved, and he avoided jail.

Why are the Cypherpunks fundamental? Because without the Cypherpunks, today we wouldn't have encrypted WhatsApp or Telegram (privacy in messages), secure credit card purchases (the HTTPS protocol), and Cryptocurrencies.

B-money.

The Cypherpunk effort was not in vain. In 1998, "B-money" was created. The creator Wei Dai, part of the Cypherpunk universe, proposed a distributed money system where money is created by solving mathematical puzzles (the ancestor of mining).

The project didn't "fail" in the sense that it collapsed or was shut down. It was never actually launched, remaining a theoretical proposal.

This project had three major problems:

Wei Dai had not managed to find an effective way to resolve disputes. Who checked the truthfulness of who did what? Without a definitive "blockchain" that gets everyone to agree every 10 minutes, the system risked fragmenting into a thousand different versions of the truth.

At the time, an automatic system to regulate the difficulty of mathematical calculations to manage the puzzles had not been envisioned. With the increase in computer power, if the puzzles weren't made increasingly complicated, there was a risk of creating too much money too quickly, leading to uncontrolled inflation of digital value.

Last, but not least, in modern blockchains, miners are driven to behave well because they receive an economic reward. In B-money, the incentive mechanism for those who had to keep the network secure and honest was much more vague and complex to make it work..

Bit Gold.

In the same year, Bit Gold appeared. The creator, Nick Szabo (also in the Cypherpunk universe), designed a digital currency based on Proof of Work, very similar to Bitcoin.

Szabo wanted to create something that had the same properties as gold (scarcity, difficulty of extraction, intrinsic value) but that could be sent over the internet without the need for an armored truck. The name itself says it all: Bit (digital) + Gold.

There are rumors that Szabo is Satoshi Nakamoto. Rumors whose truthfulness no one can confirm.

Szabo, in creating his idea of digital currency, introduced a revolutionary concept: to create a currency, you had to "toil."

The basic idea is that a computer must solve a very difficult mathematical puzzle. Once solved, the solution is sent to the whole network, which had to certify the authenticity of that solution. That "certified" solution becomes a piece of Bit Gold, which was intended to become spendable digital currency. Since it cost time and electricity to produce it, that piece has value.

Despite the genius of the idea, Bit Gold followed eCash and B-money into failure. Bit Gold, as innovative as it was, had a logical "hole" that Szabo could not quite close without a central authority.

The problem was this: if I have a piece of Bit Gold and I send it simultaneously to two different people, who decides who the real owner is? Szabo hypothesized a system of "distributed ledgers" managed by servers, but he didn't find a way to make them agree if some of those servers tried to cheat.

Bitcoin.

Decentralized control seemed like a riddle without a solution. The breakthrough moment happened during one of the largest financial crises in recent history. In 2008, the financial system was very close to collapsing. Due to the failure of Lehman Brothers (and the mortgage disaster), the world economy took a blow to the teeth of unheard-of power. That crisis is easily comparable to that of 1929.

From that crisis, the most important chapter of this book was being written. It almost seems poetic: "the phoenix rising from the ashes." On October 31, 2008, an individual (or group, nothing is known about them) under the pseudonym "Satoshi Nakamoto" published a technical document (the White Paper) titled "Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System."

Unlike all previous failures, Nakamoto solved the problem that had blocked all his predecessors: how to exchange value online without needing a bank to act as a guarantor, preventing someone from spending the same "digital coin" twice. Nakamoto solved Szabo's problem by introducing the "Timestamp": essentially, the network decides that the valid transaction is simply the one that arrives first in time and is recorded in the block.

The concept became reality a couple of months later, on January 3, 2009, when Satoshi "turned on" the network and the first block in Bitcoin's history was mined, called the Genesis Block. That block was an empty block, as there were no people in the world who owned Bitcoin or were part of the mining system.

Inside that first block, Satoshi simply inserted a text message: "The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks." It was the headline of a newspaper at the time talking about the government bailout of banks. Many see that message as a clear political signal: Bitcoin was born as an alternative to the traditional financial system.

Finally, after twenty years of battles and defeats, that dream of digital visionaries became reality.

How many and what types of Crypto are there?

Since that 2009, the tune has changed. That was the proof that Blockchain technology worked and that people could truly transfer digital money to buy objects, services, and anything else. Today, theoretically, you can go to someone, buy something, and pay them in Bitcoin or any other existing digital currency if the other person agrees. If you think about it, a sale is a free agreement between free people, and any payment can be decided. Theoretically, I could pay for groceries in hair, if the supermarket accepted my hair as a form of payment.

Not only that, it was the signal that "anyone could create their own blockchain and their own currency." In short, Bitcoin was the proof: with the right hardware and knowledge, one could create their own digital currency. From 2009 to today, many cryptos were born, had their moment of glory, and failed. As of today, 2026, there are over 20,000 different cryptocurrencies. The amazing thing? They are not all the same. Even if the number is huge, all can be grouped into 5 large categories.

Payment Coins.

These are the cryptocurrencies born with the original goal of Satoshi Nakamoto and the Cypherpunks: to be a peer-to-peer digital currency for purchasing goods and services, without the government being able to see what you bought, from whom you bought it, and how much you spent. These cryptos focus on security, transaction speed, and the ability to maintain value over time. The most glaring examples are Bitcoin (BTC) and Litecoin (LTC).

Utility Tokens.

These are not "currencies" in the strict sense, because you can't buy existing goods with these coins. Well, theoretically you could, but that is not their primary function. These coins function mainly as tokens that give access to a specific service within a blockchain platform. The primary example is Ethereum (ETH), which is not just a currency, but a global computer where you load applications to use. To access this computer and use its applications, you must pay a "fee" using ETH. Other examples are Chainlink (LINK) or Solana (SOL). Unlike Bitcoin, Ethereum and Solana have much larger blocks that can even host entire programs, access to which is guaranteed only after paying a fee of ETH or SOL on the blockchain.

Stablecoins.

Every cryptocurrency that can be bought on the stock market through brokers (Bitvavo, Bitpanda, eToro, Coinbase, etc.) has one peculiarity: they are volatile as hell. This means that at the beginning of the year they can be worth 1, in the middle of the year 1000, and then less than one at the end of the year. Stablecoins are cryptocurrencies designed to eliminate the problem of volatility (sharp price swings). Their value is "pegged" to that of a stable asset, usually the US dollar. The most glaring and famous examples are Tether (USDT) or USD Coin (USDC). These coins are the "safe haven" where investors hide their capital during market crashes without having to return to traditional money. "Why stay with stablecoins instead of having dollars if the value is the same?" Because with stablecoins, you have an income if you hold them (staking). Just for the fact that you own stablecoins, the holder earns money. In case of a "deep red" market, I sell my assets, put my earnings in stablecoins, and earn interest on them. Not bad, right?

Governance Tokens

These tokens cannot be spent anywhere. They are designed to be certificates of ownership. They give the owner the right to vote on future decisions of a blockchain project. It’s like owning shares in a company that allow you to vote in meetings. The most representative cryptos in this field are Uniswap (UNI) and Aave (AAVE).

Meme Coins.

Meme coins are coins that have no intrinsic value. So far, all types of cryptocurrencies had a use, a reason to exist. With meme coins, this reason disappears. They are just cryptocurrencies often born for fun or as a joke, linked to internet phenomena or social communities. I’m reminded of the meme coins for Donald Trump, Melania Trump, and the "Hawk Tuah girl"—coins that made millions for their owners and caused millions in losses for those who invested in them. However, for some mystic reason, despite their ironic nature, some have reached market caps in the billions of dollars, like Dogecoin (DOGE) (Elon Musk’s coin) and Shiba Inu (SHIB). They are extremely volatile, and their price depends almost entirely on community sentiment and social media posts (like Elon Musk's). They don't react rationally to market trends, but only to community interest, especially on social media. Paradoxically, the whole crypto world can crash, and a memecoin can grow 200x. The real challenge is finding the right Memecoin.

Crypto: The Future?

As we have seen so far, especially with Satoshi Nakamoto and the Cypherpunks, the focus has always been on the idea that "crypto is the future" because they guarantee the transparency, immutability, and privacy that the world is loudly calling for when it comes to economic transactions.

Decades pass, and the rules of engagement have changed. Now, cryptocurrencies are no longer seen as a "secure payment method" for buying coffee, but as a store of value. The fascinating concept is that in a world where traditional currencies (Euro, Dollar) suffer from inflation, losing value because they are printed continuously (just look at the Covid-19 pandemic), cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin have a maximum number of units (21 million). It cannot go beyond that because it is written in the cryptocurrency's code. This makes it similar to gold, but easier to transport and divide. Furthermore, the devaluation of fiat currency raises the value of crypto, giving them almost constant gains. Think about it: if 1 BTC is worth 1 one year, and just due to inflation, that value becomes 1.2 the second year, I’ve just made 20% by exploiting a failing monetary system.

Beyond using currency to build wealth (or to buy things, as originally intended), there is another aspect: usage. Here we talk about Ethereum, Solana, and application platforms. The future here isn't "buying the coin," but using the network.

Imagine being able to take out a mortgage, insurance, or a sales contract without going through a bank or a notary, using transparent and immutable contracts (smart contracts) that require no intermediaries. Or think of using applications like Google Play, but on the Ethereum platform, without censorship or prior control. It’s the idea of an internet where data doesn't belong to giants like Google or Meta, but to the users themselves through their own wallets.

Challenges for the future.

Crypto technology is beautiful, innovative, democratic, and free. However, we know it isn't being used. The real big problem for crypto is acceptance and the opinion people have of this technology.

Acceptance.

Take Bitcoin, for example. Being the largest and most famous cryptocurrency in the sector, it is the one that, in a way, sets the pace for the entire market.

Let's start with a fundamental concept: the more the world uses something, the more that thing "has value"—not just economic, but social. Think of a piece of paper. That blank sheet has almost zero intrinsic value, but it has very high social value, being used everywhere for everything, from writing a grocery list to buying a company.

With Bitcoin, we have enormous intrinsic value but almost zero social value because no one uses Bitcoin for what it was meant for: paying. Why? Because public opinion has always seen Bitcoin as the currency of crime. Examples like Silk Road have negatively branded the reputation of this currency and technology. For those who don't know, Silk Road was the largest e-commerce platform on the deep web, where people bought drugs, weapons, passports, fake identities, and everything else crime needed. Knowing that only Bitcoins were used on that platform due to its "secret" nature put the idea in people's heads that anyone who uses Bitcoin "is a criminal." I used to have this opinion too, then I discovered it is a world much more legal than what you hear.

Furthermore, there is a lack of rules. Only recently has work begun on legislation to make the crypto world "safe" from a legislative point of view. Until five or ten years ago, there were no rules and anyone could do whatever they wanted. It is a very slow process, not a priority, that will go on for years. Maybe in this period, one could get interested and see if there are margins for profit.

Technology.

Beyond acceptance, we also have a technology problem.

Firstly, scalability. Blockchains must become as fast as Visa circuits (thousands of transactions per second) without losing security. This means either larger blocks, faster block creation, or multiple blockchains at once. As of today, most cryptocurrencies process transactions linearly on a single main chain. Fortunately, we have Layer 2 technologies, like Polygon, which take thousands of transactions, pack them together off the main blockchain, and then send a single "summary receipt" to the blockchain itself. However, we are still far from VISA standards.

Then we have sustainability. Miners consume a lot of energy. Energy consumption (especially Bitcoin’s) is under the microscope, both for those who want to invest by buying coins and those who want to invest in the technology. Furthermore, with today's costs, being a miner is a low-profit activity, failing to give the Bitcoin blockchain the speed it needs (fewer miners means more slowness in creating and closing blocks). There is a shift toward greener systems (like Proof of Stake), but it takes time.

Usability is still in its infancy. At the moment, the only way you have to store Bitcoin and all other cryptos is a hard wallet. A wallet of this kind isn't exactly easy to use for payments. As long as using a wallet is complicated and even risky (if you lose the access key, you lose everything), crypto will never become mainstream. When they find a way to use crypto like we use our checking accounts now (instant smartphone payments) or PayPal, then everyone will use crypto.

Even central banks (ECB, Fed) could play a role in acceptance. This is incredible, considering crypto was created not to be dependent on a "central power." How can they help crypto? Simple: they are creating the Digital Euro and the Digital Dollar.

Will they be cryptocurrencies? No, because they will be centralized and controlled by the State. The advantage isn't technological, but psychological. If a bank takes this step, then people might think about getting into the game too, seeing that an institution like the ECB is investing in crypto. So people might start using digital wallets, making cryptos true decentralized currencies—an alternative of freedom for those who don't want total government control over their savings.

Final Thoughts.

Today, crypto, despite the technology and the need for privacy, is like the internet in the early 90s. Everyone talks about it, few truly understand it, and almost no one knows how to use it correctly. And yet, despite the crashes, scams, and political instability of this 2026, the concept of a currency that belongs to no one but the person who owns it remains the most revolutionary idea of the century.

Perhaps Bitcoin will never replace the Euro, but it has already done something extraordinary: it has forced us to ask ourselves what money really is. And you? Are you ready to trust a mathematical code, or do you prefer to remain anchored to the old certainties of central banks?

M.