The BASIC PATH represents the ideal framework essential to understanding the complex mechanisms that form the cornerstones of the Cryptocurrency and Blockchain concepts. It immediately clarifies multiple essential aspects and, after outlining some historical backgrounds important to the definition of a homogeneous framework, delves vertically into Bitcoin, the first Cryptocurrency ever and the one with by far the largest market capitalization, and Ethereum, the second Cryptocurrency in terms of capitalization and the Smart Contract platform that aims to represent a kind of huge planetary computer with decentralized and programmable applications. 

The conceptual difference between these two well-known Cryptocurrencies and between their consensus mechanisms, as well as the significant distinctions at the level of scalability and decentralization, make it possible to highlight the emergence of a great many other Cryptocurrencies, the so-called Altcoins, and multiple alternative Blockchains, which make the whole ecosystem in enormous development and change.