It’s getting harder and harder to ignore the world of cryptocurrencies as they start to have a real impact on the fintech community and the wider world. That’s only likely to increase, so there’s no excuse for not knowing enough about them to see how they might apply to you and your business.

However, cryptocurrencies can often seem like a closed-off world of its own, a community built and run by the tech-minded, full of memes, jargon and a sense of exclusivity that can be off-putting to newcomers. There’s can also be a lot of complexity in how they actually work for those of us used to money that can be held in our hands.

Cryptocurrencies Mocked As Real Bank Notes

To help explain how they work and where they came from, 99bitcoins has taken the top 10 cryptocurrencies and mocked up what their real bank notes would look like So have a look, learn some more and see which ones might be the most useful for you to try using in the future:

Bitcoin

Most people could say that they’ve heard of Bitcoin even if they couldn’t explain exactly what it is or how it works. So this bank note might help you visualize what it would be like to have some Bitcoin to put in your wallet, as well as learning a little about its history. Bitcoin was created in 2009 by somebody (or somebodies) going by the name of Satoshi Nakamoto, who invented blockchain technology, which is where a network of people agree on the state of a ledger rather than having someone appointed to do so. You can ‘mine’ Bitcoin by solving mathematical puzzles.

Ethereum

Russian-born wonderkid Vitalik Buterin created Ethereum when barely out of his teens in 2015, so his incredibly young face features on this bank note mock-up, making clear that this is not your usual currency (no Queen or 18th Century scientists on this note). Ethereum allows for custom software to be stored and run on its blockchain, and these are are Dapps and it’s most often used for ICOs – these are ‘initial coin offerings’ that raise money for start-ups without going through the usual channels of venture capital.