A type of digital currency whose internal units of account are accounted for by a decentralized payment system (no internal or external administrator or any of its analogues),[1][2] operating in a fully automatic mode. Cryptocurrency itself does not have any special material or electronic form - it is simply a number denoting the number of units of account data, which is recorded in the corresponding position of the information packet of the data transfer protocol and is often not even encrypted, like all other information about transactions between the addresses of the system.

The term cryptocurrency was established after the publication of an article about the Bitcoin system, "Crypto currency", published in 2011 in Forbes[3]. Both the creator of Bitcoin and many other authors used the term "electronic cash.

A type of digital currency whose internal units of account are accounted for by a decentralized payment system (no internal or external administrator or any of its analogues),[1][2] operating in a fully automatic mode. Cryptocurrency itself does not have any special material or electronic form - it is simply a number denoting the number of units of account data, which is recorded in the corresponding position of the information packet of the data transfer protocol and is often not even encrypted, like all other information about transactions between the addresses of the system.

The term cryptocurrency was established after the publication of an article about the Bitcoin system, "Crypto currency", published in 2011 in Forbes[3]. Both the creator of Bitcoin and many other authors used the term "electronic cash.