Cryptography for the purpose of confidential payments began to be used since 1990 in the DigiCash system of David Chom, whose company went bankrupt in 1998. However, its payment system was centralized, and the term "cryptocurrency" was first used after the appearance of the Bitcoin peer-to-peer payment system, which was developed in 2009 by a person or group of persons under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto and uses SHA-256 hashing and a proof-of-concept system. of-work.

Later, other Bitcoin-independent cryptocurrencies, called Bitcoin forks, appeared: Namecoin (decentralized DNS using the cryptocurrency of the same name to register internal .bit domains), Litecoin (uses Scrypt hashing, increased upper limit of total emission, reduced transaction confirmation time), PPCoin (uses a hybrid proof-of-work / Proof-of-stake mechanism, has no upper limit on the total amount of emission), Novacoin (similar to PPCoin, but uses scrypt and reduced emission-related coefficients) .

Many other forks have also been created, but most of them have nothing new in them (either they are an exact copy of Bitcoin, or their differences are limited only to the values ​​of the limit and speed of emission and/or the hash function algorithm) and have not become widespread.

Most of these forks appeared against the background of two large, accompanied by increased attention from the media, bubbles in the Bitcoin market in 2011 and 2013.

In 2018, the Australian city of Agnes Waters became the first city in the world to allow payments in cryptocurrency. In the city, you can pay with Bitcoin (Bitcoin), Bitcoin Cash (Bitcoin.​Cash), Ether (ETH/USD), Litecoin (LTC/USD) and NEM. Also, in cooperation with the leadership of French Polynesia, a public organization consisting of philanthropists, scientists and investors is working on creating an alternative to modern countries - the Floating Island Project. This program involves the creation of an artificial island where houses for 300 residents will be located. The entity will have its own government, and the local currency will be the Varyon cryptocurrency.

In the first half of 2018, hackers stole 1 billion dollars worth of cryptocurrencies.During the period from January 2017 to September 2018, North Korean hackers alone stole half a billion dollars worth of cryptocurrencies from foreign exchanges (according to the UN).[21]

In June 2020, the American singer and rapper of Senegalese origin Akon said in an interview for Bloomberg that he plans to launch his own cryptocurrency Akoin next month