What is Cryptography

Cryptography is the process of encoding data to make it unreadable for unauthorized parties, thereby conserving authenticity and confidentiality of the sent messages. Cryptography is especially important for interactions over the internet, otherwise without cryptography, entities are left vulnerable to malicious attacks. Cryptography represents the backbone of cryptocurrencies and there are several cryptography mechanisms. Cryptocurrencies makes use of public and private keys, which are made up of alphanumeric characters. This is known as assymetric encryption. Public keys represent addresses, where the digital currencies can be sent. On the other hand, private keys are secret keys, known only to the owner, used to decrypt and access the crypto funds. The messages are also hashed and signed before being sent.