First of all i would want to let us know that "Crypto means hidden. Cryptocurrency is a digital or Virtual Currency that is secured Cryptographically and operates on the bases of a blockchain technology. Cryptocurrency was created with freedom and decentralization and freedom in mind, it was created to bypass the mediatorship of big intermediaries like banks and the interference and hegemony of government over monetary and financial lives of people.
Financial institutions who are incharge of how money and risks are moved through the economy of a country, are like a people sitting on the neck of an hour glass, they collect a lot of economic rent from people, and manipulate the country's monetary system any how them deem fit.
A Japanese scientist by name Satoshi Nakamoto created the first Cryptocurrency known as Bitcoin in 2010 and wrote a short letter were he said that he has been working on an electronic payment system with no trusted intermediaries. Till now the identity of Satoshi Nakamoto is still shrouded in Mystery.
Blockchain technology which is the technology upon which Cryptocurrencies operate, is a digital and distributed record of transactions, the records made in Blockchain are connected to each other in blocks and are immutable in nature, because each block of records are are uniquely secured by what is called a hash, each block carries the it's own hash and also the hash of the previous block.
Note that Satoshi Nakamoto was not the first to attempt to create and electronic payment system, the first attempt was in 1989 by professor David Chaum, he created the digicash, and he was followed by a host of others, but these earlier attempts failed due to some certain factors which Satoshi Nakamoto overcame in his own time.
Also note Satoshi Nakamoto did not invent Blockchain technology, what he did was integrating electric payment with Blockchain technology to create a new financial system that sets free from the mediatorship of big intermediaries and from the hegemony of governments.