CNBC talking head Jim Cramer echoed a popular perception of Bitcoin when he likened it to Monopoly Money on his finance show in 2017. 

To the unfamiliar, Bitcoin sounds like an imaginary currency used solely by techies. And when you tell people that it was created in 2009 by a still-anonymous party who may or may not be dead? Seems *very* fake, but OK! 

Spoiler alert: Bitcoin is very real. The same goes for the blockchain, the distributed, decentralized, and tamper-proof ledger on which Bitcoin transactions are recorded. Both are key players in the cryptocurrency world, that much is sure. But in terms of relevance to the average citizen, the blockchain wins out, as it’s useful across all sorts of industries beyond finance, from healthcare to entertainment.