Loyal lads, I come here to shill Cryptocurrency (and Litecoin in particular today) to you. In some threads where Bitcoin/Cryptocurrency has been mentioned recently, I made the suggestion to buy Litecoin as SegWit was looking to be accepted (more on this later). It has since been accepted and the value has increased from ~$4USD (March) up to ~$26USD as of today.
I know some people here are very skeptical of Cryptocurrency (many others are shills), so I'd like to give a quick brief on how it works.
Most cryptocurrencies are of finite supply and those that are not are usually on a rate of fixed inflation. In Bitcoin's case, there will only ever be 21,000,000 Bitcoins in existence. In the year 2140, all 21,000,000 will have been mined. At present, around 16,000,000 are in supply. Note that, in Bitcoin's case, speed of mining is exponentially reduced as time goes by. Litecoin will have 84,000,000 in 2140. And some of the other cryptocurrencies (Ethereum, Monero) have fixed inflation rates.
Now, a brief explanation on how exactly Cryptocurrency works: In Mathematics and Computer Sciences, there is a thing called a hash function. A Hash Function is a one way mathematical operation meaning that it cannot be reversed. For example, if I had the string "hitlerdidnothingwrong" and ran it through a hash function, the result might be something like:
"7e726f9338324c102cdb570905f140709b9b3d500d4e429069c0474417170519"
From this resulting "hash", there is no way that anyone can guess what the original string ("hitlerdidnothingwrong") was UNLESS they try every possible string until they receive that same result. They have to "brute force" it. This is how Bitcoin's POW (Proof-Of-Work) functions. Basically, it is fed completely random inputs until the resulting "hash" matches a certain pattern (In Bitcoin's case, less than a certain number when converted to Binary). And each time a "miner" (the people who are expending electricity to try these hashes) finds one that matches that pattern, a "block" is created and transactions in the "Mem Pool" (think of this as temporary storage) are put into this block - which is appended on top of the previous block. This is why it is called a "Block-Chain" (Block -> Block -> Block -> Block) and why Bitcoin transactions take a while to become spendable. Transactions are not considered legitimate until the they have moved from the temporary "Mem Pool" into the permanent "Blockchain" itself. Every node on the Network holds a copy of this blockchain - meaning they store every transaction that has ever been done in Bitcoin. However, tracing who actually made this transactions is incredibly difficult because anyone can generate a Bitcoin Wallet in seconds without ever attaching their name to it. Basically, a nameless Swiss Bank Account.
Please note that this explanation isn't 100% accurate, but it describes vaguely how Blockchains work. But here's where "SegWit" comes into it…
At the moment, Bitcoin Blocks are limited to 1MB - meaning that they can only store 1MB worth of transactions each time a block is found (through miner trial/error, this statistically averages to about one block every ten minutes). This means that the network has limited transaction capacity - estimated to be between 3 to 7 TPS (Transactions Per Second). And this limit is currently being hit. The solution to decide whose transactions get included in a "Block" is to create a fee market. Basically, you "bid" your position in a Block by associating a fee to your transaction which incentivizes whoever mined the block to include you in it (this fee goes back to the miner who mined the block). But, the fees are running high at the moment at up to $1USD/transaction.
