Экономика лежит в основе всего. Она влияет на жизнь каждого из нас, и поэтому в ней важно разбираться хотя бы на базовом уровне.

The definition of a node may vary according to the context. When it comes to computer or telecommunication networks, nodes may act either as a redistribution point or as a communication endpoint. Usually, a node consists of a physical network device, but there are some cases where virtual nodes are used.

Bitcoin is often referred to as digital cash, but this is a questionable comparison. If Alice pays Bob ten dollars in cash, Bob has no idea where the money came from. If he later goes on to give it to Carol, she will be unable to deduce that Alice was once in possession of it. Bitcoin is different because of its inherent public nature. The history of a given coin (more precisely, an unspent transaction output or UTXO) can be trivially observed by anyone. It’s a bit like writing the transaction amount and names of participants on a bill every time it’s used.

AML regulations attempt to stop the illegal laundering of illicit funds. Individual governments and multinational organizations like the FATF legislate against money laundering activities. Money laundering takes “dirty” money and turns it into clean money. This can be done by disguising the origins of the funds, mixing them with legitimate transactions, or investing them into legal assets.

A typical crypto card lets you earn crypto rewards or instantly convert your crypto to fiat currency to pay for goods and services. Both Mastercard and Visa issue crypto cards, meaning you can use your crypto in millions of locations globally. A prepaid crypto card is similar to a debit card in that it has to be pre-loaded with crypto to spend. You can get a crypto card from a licensed issuer such as a crypto exchange or bank. However, crypto cards aren't without risk. Your funds stored on the card can still lose their market value, and any transactions you make with your card are likely to be taxable.

Play-to-earn games allow users to farm or collect crypto and NFTs that can be sold on the market. By playing the game regularly, each player can earn more items or tokens to sell and generate an income. Some players have even begun to supplement or replace their salaries playing these blockchain games. However, such activity involves risk, as you typically need to put up an initial investment to purchase characters and items to play the game. Blockchain helps guarantee the collectibility of these items and create working digital economies. Blockchain technology and NFTs allowed for the creation of digital items that are impossible to duplicate. This created the concept of digital scarcity.

Mining is integral to the security of Proof of Work blockchains. By computing hashes with certain properties, participants are able to secure cryptocurrency networks without the need for a central authority. When Bitcoin first launched in 2009, anyone with a regular PC could compete with other miners to guess a valid hash for the next block. That’s because the mining difficulty was low. There wasn’t much hash rate on the network. As such, you didn’t need specialized hardware to add new blocks to the blockchain.