Cryptocurrency is a digital or virtual currency secured by cryptography and based on a network that is distributed across a large number of computers. Blockchain was proposed for Bitcoin by Satoshi Nakamoto in his quest to solve the Europe’s economic crisis in 2008. The technology underpins cryptocurrencies like the Bitcoin and many other applications.
Satoshi proposed Bitcoin as a new payment method that dispenses with central authorities like central banks, using a cryptographically protected chain of data blocks later called as blockchain. This technology was first used in cryptocurrencies where its success was first seen from Bitcoin. Nowadays, there are many successes have been observed of cryptocurrency specially a revolution has done by bitcoin. The total cryptocurrency market cap is $ 2.79 trillion, equivalent to the 8th largest economy in the world.
There are 730 global cryptocurrency spot exchanges found around the globe. In spite of its potential, prospect, strength and successes, cryptocurrency has some challenges and regulatory aspect that hinder its full adoption in some areas and that has been discussed in this paper. It is an exploratory study to depict the potentials, prospects, market, challenges and future of cryptocurrency special emphasis of bitcoin.