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The recent cryptocurrency surge is lending credence to the viability of digital currency.

In the latest episode of Financial Freestyle with Ross Mac, Armando Pantoja joins Ross Mac to discuss the booming cryptocurrency market and the often misunderstood technology that underpins it.

Pantoja, a former cryptology graduate student, is now an avid advocate for cryptocurrency—though his enthusiasm wasn’t always assured. He recalls the cryptocurrency exchange crash of 2013, which prompted him to withdraw from the market. However, his perspective shifted in 2015 with the emergence of ethereum.

“I was interested in the computing side of ethereum (ETH-USD). How that whole system worked,” Pantoja continues. “Then I realized… how things work... how assets drop, how they come up and it got me into stocks, got me into crypto, got me into tech investing.” This knowledge led Pantoja to create ICO Ranker in 2017, which he would sell one year later to 360 Blockchain Inc. for $1.8 million.

Today, Pantoja is a crypto and blockchain expert, frequently traveling to speak about the transformative potential of blockchain technology. As he told Mac, much of the skepticism surrounding cryptocurrencies stems from a lack of understanding of blockchain. “The problem [is] that most people don't understand what cryptocurrency is based on blockchain technology. The technology of blockchain is what makes everything so secure,” says Pantoja. His reasoning is that it “is the most secure database that's ever been created… There's... almost no way possible to lose data. And three is that it can't be tampered with.”

For Pantoja, the true innovation lies not in cryptocurrencies themselves but in the underlying technology.

“It's the technology and when you understand that that [the} technology can't be stopped,” Pantoja continues. “We'll understand that everybody on earth, all organizations, every country will have to accept this way of doing things because of… the transformative nature of the blockchain technology.”

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This post was written by John Tejada.