#CryptoBasics Imagine you have a special kind of money that only exists on computers. You can't hold a physical coin or a paper bill in your hand. This digital money is called cryptocurrency, or "crypto" for short. It's like the tokens you use in a video game arcade to play games, but you can use it to buy real things online, and many people see it as a new kind of investment.

The biggest and most important difference between crypto and the money in your bank account is that it isn't controlled by any government, bank, or company. This is called decentralization. Normally, a bank keeps a ledger (a big book) of everyone's transactions. With crypto, this ledger is copied and shared across thousands of computers all around the world. This shared public ledger is called a blockchain.