Cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin will be the future of money. They are programmable and can be divided in very small sums of money, currently the extremely low cost transactions for IOT devices, etc. is not possible, but all this is changing fast.
The bitcoin network currently has a limit of about 7 transactions per second, not even close to worldwide payment networks such as Visa (V) that can process more than 25 000 transactions per second. This is because every "node" (active participant) on the bitcoin network must verify every single transaction and reach consensus, otherwise the transaction fails.
The miners who unlock the transactions by solving complicated cryptography compete for the highest paid transactions, so anyone who wants to send bitcoin on the network must pay a price these miners are willing to unlock the transaction for; the higher the fee the sender applies on the transaction, the faster the miners will solve it and your transaction passes through to the receiver.
The total market cap of bitcoin is over 90 billion dollars (17 635 800 BTC times 5200 dollars per bitcoin)
Meaning the price Mrs. Market currently puts on the bitcoin network is worth 90 billion dollars, a drop from almost 360 billion dollars at its height in early 2018. Then it was priced in a remarkable growth of users and capabilities of the blockchain technology. Since then that pricing has decreased substantially as Mrs, Market has become more aware of the drawbacks and implementation time of features, etc. as all new technology faces.
The blockchain technology enables a unique way for people who don't know or trust each other to do business, never before seen in the human history. A middle man has always been needed, kings and emperors ensured safety for trading and punishment for those who counterfeited its
