Through instructions in their source codes, cryptocurrencies automatically adjust to the amount of mining power working to create new blockchain copies — copies become more difficult to create as mining power increases and easier to create as mining power decreases.
Similar to forex — foreign exchange — trading, there can be significant risks involved with a largely unregulated market, and your best bet is to get informed beforehand, and don’t invest any money you can’t afford to lose. Regulators are still trying to figure out how to classify cryptocurrencies, for purposes of trading, payments, antifraud, taxation, and more. Clear regulation may help us understand how to use cryptocurrency and what its future may look like, but we aren’t there yet.

Cryptocurrency’s technical foundations date back to the early 1980s when an American cryptographer named David Chaum invented a “blinding” algorithm that remains central to modern web-based encryption.
Using vast amounts of computing power, often manifested in private server farms owned by mining collectives that comprise dozens of individuals, miners use highly technical methods to verify the completeness, accuracy, and security of currencies’ blockchains.