Cryptography is the use of creating and solving puzzles. The most common use of cryptography in today's world is the encryption of various digital transmissions' contents so that outsiders are unable - at the very least, they find it difficult to do so - to intercept text messages, emails, identifying information like Social Security numbers, and financial information like bank account' routing and account numbers and credit or debit card numbers, expiration dates, and CVV numbers.

Another widespread use of cryptography is in cryptocurrencies, which take their name after the Greek word "kruptos," meaning hidden, which has since morphed into the modern English spelling of "crypto."

Cryptocurrencies, without getting into the fine details of how they function, use codes and puzzles to secure their transmission and prevent people from changing the public ledger of all transactions in such cryptocurrencies' entire histories to commit fraud or otherwise wrongly benefit themselves.

Bitcoin is the most popular and most valuable cryptocurrency right now, not to mention the first ever cryptocurrency to be developed and actually used in practice.

How much is Bitcoin worth right now?

In terms of United States Dollars, as of around 7:00 p.m. Central Time, Tuesday, Dec. 3, 2019, one bitcoin is worth about $7,160. The all-time high value of Bitcoin was about $19,750 in mid-December 2017, which steadily dropped to about $6,200 by early February 2018.

Although bitcoin hasn't been worth as nearly as much since then, it's still performing relatively well.

A recap of the performance of all cryptocurrencies in the past few days

In the past 24 hours - from about 6:00 p.m. Central Time Monday, Dec. 2, to the same time Tuesday, Dec. 3 - the price of BTC in USD rose about 0.5%.

This gain isn't noteworthy, though, as the overall trend of bitcoin's value has been on a downtrend despite the fact it momentarily rose to $7,875 last week.

Benjamin Pirus, a well-known crypto news agency contributor and expert, believes that BTC could end up hitting a worth of about $5,000 within the next month or two.