Digital money, or crypto currency, is very similar to text files. And the corresponding transactions are not more difficult than sending e-mail to friends. Owners of crypto currency can send it directly, without the participation of banks and other intermediaries. To do this, you only need to know the purse number. But the name, country or phone number is not necessary: ??most of the crypto currency is anonymous. For example, bitcoin, which, according to CoinMarketCap (Forbes analog for crypto currency), accounts for 40% of the total capitalization of the crypto currency market, works just like this.

The total capitalization of the market today is $ 138 billion. More than a thousand of their species are already functioning. But do not rush to invest in crypto currency without a balanced assessment of some risks. DW - about the five most important dangers.

Instability of the Crypto currency exchange rate does not have a single rate. For example, the course of bitcoin may vary several times a day. Some people try to make money on it: to have time to buy a digital currency cheaper and sell more expensive. However, while the sale is taking place, bitcoin has time to change its course several times. Therefore, his fans should be ready for a loss of investment.

Most crypto-currencies are decentralized, they do not have a single bank that would control the entire system. Their course depends on the confidence of users. After hackers hacked one of the largest bitcoin-exchanges in July 2017, the bitcoin rate fell from 2.6 thousand dollars per unit to 1.9 thousand dollars. Trust in the crypto currency was lost, although hackers hacked not bitcoin himself, but only a third-party system.

The editors of the magazine The Outline, which tells about the digital world, suggested that the rate of crypto-currency is growing when they are spoken or written about. One of the journalists The Outline found that most of the colleagues who cover the topic of crypto currency have accounts in bitcoins. And after the publication of some articles, the bitcoin course may change. So there is the possibility that if they stop talking about Bitcoin, they will lose some of their value.

Crypto currency system errors Functional crypto-currencies such as bitcoin appeared only in 2009. So all of them are now at the stage of development and correction of errors. For example, in August 2017 bitcoin was divided into two separate crypto-currencies - Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash. Too many people began using Bitcoin, and Bitcoin's bandwidth was limited to seven transactions per second. For example, Visa and Mastercard payment systems generate about 2000 transactions per second.

Many bitcoin users decided to intervene in the code and improve bitcoin. However, another part of the users wanted to leave the old system. The complication of the system would lead to an increase in the requirements for the computing power of the miners (crypto currency receivers. - Red. ), which means that not everyone could get bitcoin.

Changes in the system can not be accepted until all users of the decentralized system of crypto currency agree with this. Since a compromise between the two sides was not achieved, bitcoin was divided into two parts. It also happened with another crypto currency Ethereum - it broke up after hacking into two parts.

Probability of a financial bubble Robert Schiller, Nobel Prize winner in economics in 2013, believes that bitcoin is the best example of a speculative bubble. He said this in an interview with Quartz, which specializes in technology, the Internet and business.

A financial bubble occurs when too much money is behind a small number of assets, as a result of which these assets are revalued. There is a legend (it is often told to students of economic specialties of universities) about the recognition of a financial bubble. In 1928, before the Great Depression in the United States, a well-known banker heard a question from his footwear shoe: "Is it worth selling the shares of the railway company?".

It is not known what the banker replied, however, after returning to the office, he ordered to sell all shares of this company. A few days later she went bankrupt. The banker considered that if already a shoe cleaner bought shares of this company, then a professional investor should take his money as soon as possible.

Anonymous - does not mean it is safe Because of the inability to track who exactly owns a crypto currency, it is popular with hackers, arms dealers and drugs. Thus, the Crypto-currency simplifies the circulation of funds between criminal gangs. In August, hackers demanded from HBO television ransom for the stolen script of the series "The Game of Thrones". A ransom of $ 6 million was supposed to be paid in the crypto currency of bitcoin. Crypto currency is often used by participants of "darknet" - a private network, whose users are difficult to track due to non-standard communication protocols.

Because of anonymity, you can not return lost bitcoins. For example, the programmer James Howells lost his hard drive, which contained data on 7,500 bitcoins. But since the bitcoin system is anonymous, Howells did not have the opportunity to prove that he was the owner of the lost bitcoins. And if a person loses his secret key, the system is so safe and anonymous that it is impossible to restore it.

Hackers and their new viruses New technologies generate new threats and viruses. And some greedy hackers came up with how to make money on the Crypto currency. In addition to the fact that the bitcoin-wallet can be stolen because of the vulnerability of the computer's operating system, hackers come up with new means of extracting crypto-currency. "Kaspersky Lab" announced the existence of virus-miners and about 9000 computers infected with this virus.

Anton Ivanov, an expert on Kaspersky Lab's antivirus programs, told DW that the main way to install a virus-miner is installers of advertising software (software) distributed with the help of social engineering. The user is looking for legal software on the Internet. But on the search engine he gets references to malicious resources, where he downloads this malicious software under the guise of a normal program.

After the virus is installed, it begins to perform computational operations on the victim's computer. As a result, an attacker receives a reward transferred to his wallet. Various mechanisms are used to conceal the virus. There are types of viruses that stop the process of mining (mining of crypto currency), if the user runs certain applications (games, graphics editors, and so on. Therefore, the work of the virus-miner is not always noticeable.

Anton Ivanov noted that to detect a virus-miner, you should pay attention to computer performance and increased bills for electricity, since a computer running at full capacity consumes more energy. To remove the virus-miner, you must install a protection program. The manual virus program is almost impossible to clean, since it is able to recover in the system.