POPULAR VIRTUAL CURRENCY

Bitcoin’s recent meteoric rise in value to over $1,000 has shone the spotlight on alternative currencies, but bitcoin is not the only new digital currency vying for relevancy in 2013.

Like bitcoins most of these currencies are mined by computers solving hard mathematical problems. The "coins" do not exist physically, of course, as the currencies are virtual existing only as computer files.

As they are based on peer-to-peer proto
cols, no one computer controls the currencies, but networks keep track of all transactions made using these digital currencies, but they do not know what the coins were actually used for – just the ID of the computer "wallet" they move from and to.