Currencies available on MainPanel
Jan 7, 2022 - 10 min read
Lara M.
MainPanel journalist
On this page
On SMM-MainPanel you can purchase everything you want with all the currencies available, starting from fiat currencies of all kinds and many of the cryptocurrencies available on the market.
As you can see on the SMM-MainPanel's services list, we provide everything in USD: when you deposit funds (using the available tools) on the site, they will be automatically converted to USD using the current rate.
1.1 The best way to buy services on SMM-MainPanel
As we have a Coinbase account, you can use almost every cryptocurrency available, like BTC, ETH, BNB, LTC, ADA, and more. You can also easily buy services on SMM-MainPanel using our partners’ tools like: Coinbase Commerce, Payeer, Payoneer, WebMoney, PerfectMoney, and Bank Transfer.
2 What is a 'cryptocurrency'?
Before talking about cryptocurrencies we have to start defining money. Money is technically an economic tool but, throughout history, it has always crossed paths with a physical concept for a reason: abstracting is not an easy task for everyone. Economics is a world that seems obscure to us because it requires us to broaden the scope of our vision and force our minds to detach the concept of money from that of physical money/currency.
The denarius was the currency of the Roman empire. It was a round piece of silver that was not only an instrument to exchange for bread, cart, or flask of wine. It was a political affirmation, propaganda, cultural affirmation of an empire.
Money was born as a physical and transportable representation of a value to eliminate the complexities of bartering. In the beginning, it was made of precious metals that guaranteed its authenticity, protecting it from fakes. Money and power have always gone hand in hand. It was a centralized system where the power of authority (Kingdom, State, and so on) was the guarantor for the purchasing power of coins.
History considers gold a monetary reserve and has contributed to increasing its value: a gram of gold is worth much more than its intrinsic value because becoming a currency accepted by everyone has made it more useful.
Since there are objective difficulties in splitting a gold bar into smaller parts, the precious (and scarce) material has become a counter-value. If I give the government my pound of gold, it acts as a guarantor, returning to me in exchange some notes (the new money) that are worth a fraction of that gold.
In recent history, the link between money and gold broke. The basic concept was to replace the trust represented by the physical asset with that represented by a government. The various governments were the guarantors of the purchasing power of that piece of paper, so the currency became fiat, a Latin term meaning by decree.
When we talk about fiat, we mean a currency that is worth because the law says so: the people trusted the government of a nation and, in return, the State itself ordered the people to give a value of 10 units to the paper of the relative denomination in euro/dollar/other.
By giving up gold as a guarantee of the counter value, the system has become increasingly centralized and manipulable. Gold could be owned and extracted by anyone, but power could not. So the government and the banks have the power and decide when to print money.
In the current economic system, based on digital and physical fiat and the mechanism of credit and debt, there is a register controlled by a few and centralized. On its pages are written the transactions that certify how much currency each account holder possesses.
However, power risks corrupting, as we know and see every day. For this reason, some people felt the need to remove it from banks and governments, who have always held it.
At some point in history, coincidentally in January 2009 when the world was in an economic crisis, a guy named Satoshi Nakamoto published a document that laid the foundations of Bitcoin.
The idea was to create a public ledger with all the transactions of everyone and, unlike the private ledger that until then only a few could consult, anyone could read the pages. The register was decentralized: banks did not manage it and the information was on everyone's computers, keeping anonymous every transaction.
A cryptocurrency is a kind of digital currency made by a system of codes. They work independently, far from traditional banks and governments. They use cryptography for making transactions more safe. There have been some attempts to create a cryptocurrency before Bitcoin, but they probably failed in many ways, so Bitcoin (BTC) is the first real cryptocurrency.
You can also refer to cryptocurrencies as digital currencies, alternative currencies, or virtual currencies. However, not many businesses and consumers are using them yet, and in any case, they are currently too volatile to be considered suitable payment methods. Bitcoin is far from any government oversight or influence; instead, the cryptocurrency economy is based on a peer-to-peer internet protocol. The individual units that make up a cryptocurrency are strings of encrypted data that have been encoded to represent a unit.
A feature of most cryptocurrencies is that they are planned to slowly reduce production. As a result, only a limited number of units of the currency will be in circulation. That is reminiscent of commodities, such as gold or other precious metals: the number of Bitcoins will not exceed 21 million. Ethereum (ETH), on the other hand, works slightly differently. Issuance is limited to 18 million Ethereum tokens per year, 25% of the initial stock.
Limiting the number of Bitcoins causes them to become scarce, which turns into value. Some argue that the creator of bitcoins modelled cryptocurrency on precious metals. As a result, mining becomes increasingly difficult as the reward is halved in intervals of a few years until it reaches zero.
2.1 How do cryptocurrencies work
To fully understand this innovation, we ought to remember how digital currency transactions are currently processed. When we pay with our debit card 1 dollar for a loaf of bread at the bakery, we send a message to our bank, giving the order to transfer a certain amount from our account to the other bank account. In this type of transaction, the banks are the guarantors, since they control and update the databases where the current account balances of all citizens are registered.
Satoshi Nakamoto invented Bitcoin to carry out this same type of transaction without needing the intermediation of banks. In cryptocurrency systems, the databases of individual banks are now a single ledger (a register of all transactions) updated minute by minute by a network of thousands of anonymous contributors around the world.
The technology that allows cryptocurrencies to circulate is called the blockchain. The digital ledger created by Satoshi Nakamoto is a combination of the most advanced cryptography studies, P2P technology, and a careful system of incentives to action (rewards for the miners). This digital ledger consists of blocks of transactions validated by so-called miners.
Miners are people who provide their computer hardware to perform complex mathematical calculations to confirm transactions and ensure their security. Miners can collect commissions on transactions and grab newly created bitcoins as a reward for their service. Every time you move from one block of the blockchain to the next, bitcoins are issued and immediately distributed to the miners who are the fastest to solve the expected mathematical calculations.
A limitation of the bitcoin mining system is its high environmental cost. Cryptocurrencies use advanced cryptography in a variety of ways. Cryptography was born out of the need to find secure methods of communication during World War 2, to convert easily readable information into encrypted codes. Since then, modern cryptography has evolved a great deal, and today it relies primarily on computer science and mathematical theory. It also draws on communication science, physics, and electrical engineering.
Two main elements of cryptography apply to cryptocurrencies: hashing and digital signatures.
Hashing verifies the integrity of data, maintains the structure of the blockchain, and encrypts account addresses and transactions. It also generates those cryptographic puzzles that make it possible to extract a blockchain.
Digital signatures allow a person to prove possession of encrypted information, without revealing that information. With cryptocurrencies, this technology is to sign monetary transactions. That shows the network that an account holder has consented to the transaction.
A blockchain is the decentralized public ledger or transaction list of cryptocurrencies. Complete blocks are recorded and added to the blockchain and include the most recent transactions. They are kept in chronological order as open, permanent, and verifiable records. A peer-to-peer network of market participants manages the blockchains and follows a precise protocol to validate new blocks. Each node or computer connected to the network automatically downloads a copy of the blockchain. That allows everyone to keep track of transactions with no need to keep data centrally.
Blockchain technology creates a record unchangeable with no consent of the rest of the network participants (billions of nodes). The concept of blockchain is attributed to the founder of Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto. This concept has also inspired other applications beyond money and digital currencies, like notaries.
Block mining is the process of combining new transactions into a blockchain in the form of blocks. In this process - if we talk about bitcoin, for example - new bitcoins are produced, adding to the total number of coins in circulation. Mining requires special software to solve mathematical puzzles and validate legitimate transactions that form blocks. These blocks are added to the public ledger (blockchain) every 10 minutes. When the software solves the transactions, the miners are rewarded with a variable number of bitcoins. The faster the miner's hardware processes the math problem, the more likely the transaction is to be validated and rewarded in bitcoin.
2.2 How do cryptocurrencies have a price in dollars?
The price of an individual cryptocurrency is driven by the difference between the bid and ask. When demand increases, the price goes up. Conversely, the price goes down. Since the crypto market is still small, it does not take large amounts of money to move the market price down or up. That generates high volatility of the quotes.
Since cryptocurrencies are monetary systems based only on supply and demand, there is a real risk of seeing the price plummet from one day to the next. However, this does not mean that we are facing a speculative bubble. A bubble happens when a certain number of people decide to manipulate the market to their advantage, increasing the price of something valuable. Cryptocurrencies, not being based on traditional economic laws, cannot be a bubble, as no one can change them.
2.3 What are the advantages of using cryptocurrencies?
Cryptocurrencies cannot be counterfeited. You cannot receive unwanted charges, and transactions are one-way. All transactions are public and everyone can check them. If you send money from an address to another, you will be sure that the money you are sending will arrive directly to the wallet you want, instead of making a bank the intermediary of the transaction. Using backups and passwords you can protect your crypto wallet from malicious people. You can think that cryptocurrencies can lead to the exchange of money by criminals, but this phenomenon is already widespread through cash and bank checks. Although, in some experts’ opinion, cryptocurrencies are too difficult to use by most criminals.
2.4 ₿ - Bitcoin (BTC)
Bitcoin is considered the most secure, anonymous, and scalable. On Bitcoin.org we can find these sentences, which describe perfectly the nature of Bitcoin:
“Bitcoin uses peer-to-peer technology to operate with no central authority or banks; managing transactions and the issuing of bitcoins is carried out collectively by the network. Bitcoin is open-source; its design is public, nobody owns or controls Bitcoin and everyone can take part. Through many of its unique properties, Bitcoin allows exciting uses that could not be covered by any previous payment system.”
Originally the domain was owned by Satoshi Nakamoto and Martti Malmi, the first two developers of Bitcoin; then it was left to additional people to spread the responsibility of Bitcoin and prevent one person, or a group of people, from gaining control over the Bitcoin project.
Bitcoin was the first project that introduced the blockchain and its features, like blocks encryption, mining (through which you can compare this asset to gold or precious metals), the economy behind it, and more.
From 2009, a lot of new cryptocurrencies were developed with the potentiality of managing a digital economy: they focused on the development of smart contracts and digital services. Bitcoin has remained a multi-platform form of currency. Without being limited to use on specific platforms only dedicated to Bitcoin, you can use them to make purchases anywhere in the world where it is accepted.
In 2020, Bitcoin made headlines when Paypal announced that this popular currency would be accepted as payment on their platform.
Bitcoin is powered by individuals who offer anything from individual computers to server farms to keep the ledger active and verified.
In return, miners receive a predetermined amount of Bitcoin in exchange for the number of transactions they approve. As more Bitcoins are created, Halving events embedded in the protocol occur every 210,000 blocks processed. It is called a halving event because the amount of Bitcoin a miner receives for processing a block becomes half when it exceeds these thresholds.
The Bitcoin network requires all active nodes to verify the same transaction and share their log with all other users on the network. That keeps the system transparent and more difficult to compromise.
While this is not just a Bitcoin phenomenon, it is something that other digital currencies, such as Ripple (XRP), have followed, decreasing their rules to reduce processing time. The verification time of Bitcoin can take an average of 10 minutes.
Bitcoin has a maximum of 21 million coins that can be mined or created. Once this limit is reached, no more Bitcoins can be created and miners can collect transaction fees for their work.
2.5 Ξ - Ethereum (ETH)
Ethereum is a cryptocurrency and has an extra feature. Many insiders think that Ethereum uses a revolutionary system.
Ethereum was created in 2013 by Vitalik Buterin, a developer of Russian descent but raised in Canada. At the time, Vitalik was a university student with a great passion for cryptocurrencies. This passion resulted in the creation of Bitcoin Magazine. During an evening in a Canadian pub, he and a few other programmers began discussing Bitcoin, which was a novelty at the time. In that evening, they laid the groundwork for the creation of a new blockchain, more innovative than Bitcoin's, and the Ethereum system.
Buterin, in 2014, to raise funds, relied on a crowdfunding operation. That consisted of selling millions of Ether (the future currency of Ethereum) to those interested in buying.
The following year the system became public and accessible to all. Vitalik Buterin is, for all intents and purposes, the founder of Ethereum, and, in 2014, he received the World Technology Award for the co-creation and invention of Ethereum.
In just a few years, Ethereum has become one of the most widely used cryptocurrencies worldwide, with a market capitalization that makes it second only to Bitcoin.
By definition, Ethereum is "a decentralized Web 3.0 platform for the peer-to-peer creation and publication of smart contracts created in a Turing-complete programming language."
The way Ethereum works does not differ much from Bitcoin. They both use a blockchain, and both are managed by the users. The main difference is that with Ethereum you can perform many more transactions.
In fact, in addition to being an efficient payment system (faster than Bitcoin), Ethereum allows for the creation and dissemination of smart contracts. These smart contracts are similar to the contracts you use every day, with the particularity that the process will not be able to undergo changes or cancellations.
Once you enter the Ethereum system, the contract will be concluded without any modifications, whether legal or illegal. This high security has led the system to be used by millions of users. Within the network, you exchange the Ethereum currency.
As mentioned earlier, Ethereum uses a blockchain specifically created for smart contracts. The entire system is developed globally and is open source.
New Ethers are generated through a competitive, decentralized process called mining (similar to Bitcoin). This process involves rewarding individuals for the services they have performed. By processing transitions and protecting the network using specialized hardware, bitcoin miners get rewarded through new Ether.
Mining is a very competitive business. As more miners join the network it becomes increasingly difficult to make a profit. Those with more computing power will still be able to make a profit at the expense of other users. No central authority or developer has the power to control or manipulate the system to increase its profits. Every Ethereum node will reject anything that doesn't follow the rules it expects the system to follow.
2.6 Tether (USDT)
If Bitcoin is the first cryptocurrency, then USDT is the first stablecoin, a token available on various networks, which should have a stable price based 1:1 on the USD price. You can use it to protect your gains, and in general your money, against the volatility of the crypto market.
USDT token has been created by the society Tether Limited, linked to the exchange Bitfinex, property of iFinex Inc., in 2014. You can see USDT swing too, but the price remains around 1 USD.
The token originated on the Bitcoin blockchain, generated through Omni Layer, a special protocol that allows token generation on the Bitcoin Network as well. Omni Layer is not often utilised due to slow transactions and the daily limit of bitcoin transactions that can be generated.
For this reason, all subsequent issuances of USDT tokens (and there have been many and continue) have taken place on Ethereum using the ERC20 standard. But Tether has also used Tron to generate smart contracts containing USDT token issues. Today we can therefore say that USDT is a cross-platform token.
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