Cryptocurrency developers build these protocols on advanced mathematics and computer engineering principles that render them virtually impossible to break, and thus to duplicate or counterfeit the protected currencies.
But to understand the dynamic that led to this year’s depressing year for crypto, we actually should start a few years before 2018. In bitcoin’s early days, Mt. Gox was the go-to service for handling transactions. Then, in 2014, it halted transactions and slowly copped to a crypto-hack to the tune of $473 million, the biggest hack of its kind at the time, and it gave many people pause. But it was still early enough for people to believe that the blockchain system was still getting all the technical kinks out.

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No matter if crypto is going up or down, the best thing you can do is to not look at it. Set it and forget it like you would any traditional long-term investment account. “If you let your emotions get too much into it then you could sell at the wrong time, or you might make the wrong decision,” says Yang. “You stress out about it, and I don’t think that’s a healthy way to approach it.”