In many ways, 2021 has been a “breakthrough,” says Dave Abner, head of global development at Gemini, a popular cryptocurrency exchange. “There’s tremendous focus and attention being paid to [the crypto industry].”
The next phase in the crypto mining process is to compile a list of all transactions, which is subsequently included in a new unconfirmed data block. It avoids “double spending” of any cryptocurrency and keeps a permanent and public record by adding their transaction to the blockchain, once the verification procedure is complete. The record is immutable, which means it can never be changed or corrupted.

While paying for things in cryptocurrencies doesn’t make sense for most people right now, more retailers accepting payments might change that landscape in the future. It’ll likely be much longer before it’ll be a smart financial decision to spend Bitcoin on goods or services, but further institutional adoption could bring about more use-cases for everyday users, and in turn, have an impact on crypto prices. Nothing is guaranteed, but if you buy cryptocurrency as a long-term store of value, the more “real world” uses it has, the more likely demand and value will increase.
The cryptocurrency industry has come a long way in recent years. More than ever before, crypto traders have endless options on where they want to trade. They can trade on centralized exchanges, decentralized exchanges, and even brokerages such as Robinhood.