You may have heard about these mysterious things called "Cryptocurrencies" in the news - anonymous money that seems like it can quadruple in price over night! Luckily, it's not as complicated as sensationalist media may have you believe. A cryptocurrency is any form of currency whose transactions are cryptographically validated by a decentralised network. More simply put, it is a type of money that derives its “authority” as real money from a mathematically proven history of transactions rather than the arbitrary say-so of a centralised authority. This kind of money gives power to everyday citizens to control our currency.

The first technology to use this concept on a large scale was the famous Bitcoin. Since its transactions were validated by math and not bankers, there was no way for the government or anyone else to track who owned which Bitcoin when. This anonymity revolutionised online economics and naturally lead to a black market, while also having legitimate uses. After the government’s crack down on the largest Bitcoin vendor, the Silk Road, Bitcoin went largely clean and is used for legal purposes in the vast majority of transactions.

The mechanics of Bitcoin involves two groups: the miners and the users. Miners are the people who connect their computer to the Bitcoin network to validate transactions. Since these transactions must be mathematically unable to forge, validating transactions requires an enormous amount of computing power. When the network was small and there were few miners competing among each other to validate a “block” of transactions before other miners did, many people just mined with laptops. But as more transactions flowed in and more miners entered the game, people switched from graphics cards to specially built mining cards and eventually were forced into pooling their resources among miner allies. Miners get rewarded 25 Bitcoin for validating a transaction, a vast sum that now ends up getting split among 1000 or so pool mates.

This serves the dual purpose of introducing new Bitcoin to the system as well as validating transactions. Miners tend to sell their rewards off for fiat currency or other cryptocurrency and the newly mined Bitcoin enter the system of users, being traded and used for purchase.

As an open source project, Bitcoin opened a world of opportunity for developers and to a whole world of altcoins all claiming to make improvements off of Bitcoin’s model. These improvements include new validation algorithms, new ways to distribute coins and coins revolving around drawing support to special causes. I hope to take you through all these altcoins over time, but for now I hope you have a solid understanding of cryptocurrencies and Bitcoin.

This is a post of firsts. The first post on my revamped blog and my first recipe post! I thought I'd start with something simple and easy to follow. If this goes well then expect to see more of these in the near future!

What You Will Need

• 150ml Semi-Skimmed Milk
• 230g Self-Raising Flour
• 60g Unsalted Butter
• 30g-50g Grated Cheddar (Depending on how cheesy you want them!)
• A pinch of salt

1) First you'll need to make sure your oven is pre-heated to 210C.

2) Add the flour to a large mixing bowl and rub in the butter. This will be easier to do at room temperature. If needed, microwave the butter to soften it but be careful; you don't want to mix the flour with liquid butter. This will rid the end result of it's buttery flavour.


3) Slowly mix in the cheese and milk. The mixture will get very sticky at this point so be careful. Flour up your counter and pour the dough onto it. Knead lightly so all the cheese is mixed into the dough. You'll have to keep adding flour to the dough to stop it from sticking. Once satisfied, roll the dough out flat so that the dough is about 1.5/2 cm thick and cut out circles to place onto a previously greased baking tray. The circles can be any size you'd desire but I'd recommend  circles of a 6 cm diameter. I improvised with the lid of an old coffee jar.


4) Lay the discs out flat onto the greased baking tray. I manages to get 12 from my dough. Rub the tops with a little milk and make sure they're placed with a couple of centimetres between them.


5)  Place the tray into the oven and bake for about 15 minutes. You may want to add 5 minutes if using a non-fan oven or the scones have not risen or tuned golden. Enjoy with a nice cup of tea!