IC15 is a cryptocurrency Index launched by cryptocurrency application CryptoWire. CryptoWire is owned by the TickerPlant a globally leading financial content and statistics provider. India is estimated to have more than 10 crore crypto owners, yet this is the first of its kind cryptocurrency Index of India.
The topic has a high probability of being asked as an Economy Questions or as a Science & Technology Questions in IAS Prelims.
|
Table of Contents: |
Facts about IC15
- The index will help crypto enthusiasts and investors/traders to monitor the price of the cryptocurrencies in the global markets.
- As the name itself suggests, it’ll for now only feature 15 cryptocurrencies.
- Following is the list of cryptocurrencies that will be in the IC15 index:
- Bitcoin (BTC)
- Ethereum (ETH)
- Ripple (XRP)
- Bitcoin Cash (BCH)
- Cardano (ADA)
- Litecoin (LTC)
- Binance Coin (BNB)
- Chainlink ()
- Polkadot (DOT)
- Uniswap (UNI)
- Dogecoin (DOGE)
- Solana (SOL)
- Terra (LUNA)
- Avalanche (AVAX)
- Shiba Inu (SHIB)
- The index will be administered and rebalanced every quarter by a governance committee consisting of academicians, domain experts, and industry practitioners.
- Criteria for a crypto coin to be considered for inclusion in the index:
- As per the market capitalisation of the past month, it should have been in the top 50 ranks.
- The coin should have had been traded for at least 90% of the trading days of the respective review period.
- The base date is fixed as 1st April 2018.
- The base value is fixed as 10,000.
Note: UPSC 2022 is approaching closer, supplement your preparation with the free Science & Technology Notes for UPSC by BYJU’s.
What are Cryptocurrencies?
A cryptocurrency is a digital currency that uses encryption to verify a transaction and does not depends on a bank or central authority. This means that no central authority has complete direct control over a cryptocurrency network, which makes regulation and surveillance difficult to execute. The foundation of any cryptocurrency is a specially designed decentralised program, which uses blockchain technology to host a public ledger whose copy is stored by each node on the said network. This method gives the advantage to the ledger to be tamper proof, which in turn makes the whole crypto immune to tampering.
Visit the attached link to read more about cryptocurrency.
What is Blockchain Technology?
It is a list of records, capable to grow indefinitely. Blockchain uses peer-to-peer networking to enable the management of the flow of data between different nodes (also called as Blocks).
As the name itself suggests, “Blockchain” is a chain of blocks. The number of blocks can vary depending upon the application design. A block is an instance of a program, and multiple such instances can be run on the same machine as well as different machines. Each block holds an address of a block preceding it and a block succeeding it, different algorithms are employed to find the address of a particular block in the whole chain. Each block stores the same data as others, if a legit addition of any data is done on the network, it is disseminated to each block so that they update their copy of the ledger accordingly.
Various complex mathematical algorithms are employed to verify whether the said addition of data is legit or not, if the data fails the verification process, it is not added to the ledger and no block on the whole network accepts it. If some form of tampering is done to data stored on a particular block, the other blockers (nodes) quickly discover the mismatch between that data and the data of their own node and therefore reject the whole tampered block out of the chain. Data or a record once verified and added to the public ledger cannot be deleted or edited, this makes the blockchain technology immune to tampering.
Any blockchain network has the following three fundamental components of its infrastructure:
- Distributed/Decentralised ledger technology
- Immutable records
- Smart contracts
A blockchain program can be designed to be public, private, consortium, and/or hybrid in nature. It can also be designed to be interoperable which is the case in the blockchain networks behind most of the cryptocurrencies.
Popular Applications of Blockchain Technology
Though the scope is unlimited and only a fraction of its total potential is explored as of yet, the following are the most popular applications of blockchain technology:
- Cryptocurrency,
- Smart Contracts,
- Financial Services,
- Online Games,
- Energy Trading,
- Supply chain management,
- Anti-counterfeiting,
- Healthcare,
- Election/Voting,
- and Domain names etc.
Start your IAS Exam preparation by understanding the UPSC Syllabus in-depth and planning your approach accordingly.
Related Links:
Comments