Let's start with the big one. Plug the question into Google and you'll get any number of attempts at an answer. Blockchain is like the net of a soccer goal, like DNA, like our "pattern of thought", like Google Docs (this one's actually pretty good).

But it's not nearly as complicated as these extended metaphors would have you believe. Seriously.

The blockchain is a method for digital record-keeping that doesn't require a central authority to verify its data. That's it.

Obviously there's a lot more complexity when you get into the actual execution of making those digital records secure, but that's it. It's also a deceptively simple idea, because the potential applications for the blockchain are seemingly infinite.

Imagine your bank without any wire fees or ATM charges; a digital music file that can't be pirated from a musician; or Facebook without Mark Zuckerberg. Theoretically all of these things are possible (as well as some admittedly preposterous ideas) because of blockchain technology.

The blockchain is built upon a suite of different technologies (asymmetric cryptography, peer-to-peer architecture, algorithmic processing) that fundamentally does one thing: allowing the network to establish proof of ownership of digital assets.

Blockchain is built on a series of "blocks" (surprise) that describe a history of all network transactions or transfers of ownership. As new transactions come in, they are added to the ledger, and a large group of distributed computer systems works to verify that the data are correct (also known as mining).

Blockchain technology was the creation of Satoshi Nakamoto, a developer (or group of developers) who published their now legendary white paper in 2008. The technology is believed to be a response to that year's world financial crisis — as such, its initial concern was to create an international currency outside the control of banks.

And so the blockchain's first use case, also invented by Satoshi, was Bitcoin — a scarce form of electronic money that can be sent from user to user without an intermediary's involvement.

The adoption of Satoshi's technology grew, engineers quickly found new applications for the blockchain outside of currency. But the specific infrastructure behind the Bitcoin blockchain wasn't equipped to put many of these ideas into action.

Enter Vitalik Buterin, who in 2013 published a white paper outlining the idea for a blockchain platform that could also execute a newly developed programming logic (he was 19-years-old at the time). Suddenly the blockchain could do more than record financial transactions; with the Ethereum blockchain, it was now possible to run decentralized apps (or dApps).

Don't let the nomenclature there throw you off — a dApp is nothing more than an application like Uber or Facebook, but one that can be run without centralized control.

Tokens are the easiest way to think of ownership on the blockchain. Whereas Bitcoin is intended as a currency, however, tokens have a wide breadth of applications — they can be used to pay for data transfer, as an incentive to participate in a network, or give someone the right to use a copyrighted photograph.

They are secured by "smart contracts", lines of code that dictate the terms of use for those tokens.

In the United States, the simplest way to buy cryptocurrency is through Coinbase, in the rest fo the world - Binance, a simple-to-use US dollar to a cryptocurrency exchange for Bitcoin, Ethereum, and several other cryptos.

So you've bought some Ethereum from Coinbase… now what? While it's possible to let your newly purchased cryptocurrency linger on the Coinbase exchange, if you want to ensure that your crypto is safe(r) from the hands of hackers, you'll need to move that Ethereum over to a digital wallet.

The most popular software-based digital wallet is MetaMask — you can learn how to install it on your desktop here.