If we look at all of history up until recent times (let's say until 1971), currencies were simply commodities with certain properties. The properties that made

If we look at all of history up until recent times (let's say until 1971), currencies were simply commodities with certain properties. The properties that made a commodity a good currency were portability, uniformity, divisibility and durability. Commodities have value because they are useful. A pear is useful because I can eat it. A shirt is useful because I can wear it. Gold is useful because I can use it to conduct electricity or have my tooth filled. Since gold is portable, uniform, divisible and durable, it makes a good currency too. Up until 1971, people carried around little pieces of paper (even more portable than gold) redeemable for gold as a kind of currency. Cryptocoins are worthless. They have no value. The proponents of cryptocoins cast about the world looking for commodities with value to compare cryptocoins to and found none. But then they came across the post-1971 dollar/euro. It is not immediately clear why these pieces of paper are being used post-1971. Seizing on this confusion, the cryptocoin advocates point to the one thing in the world they could find without obvious value and say "we're just like this - but better". Another gulf of confusion they exploit - they tell us technical people that this has value for financial reasons we wouldn't understand as technical people. Then they go to the financial people and tell them this blockchain technology is too complex for them to understand, but it's valuable. As few people have a foot in both worlds, it's a gulf for this scam to walk into. The market cap for Bitcoins, Ethereum, Ripple etc. is $137 billion which is absurd. Dogecoin is supposed to be worth $100 million despite its creator coming out and saying it was a joke and this valuation is absurd. Charlie Munger, Warren Buffett, Jamie Dimon all have noted how Bitcoin is, as Munger puts it, "rat poison". I witnessed the subprime mortgage bubble in 2008, the dot-com bubble in 2000, and now we have another one. Whereas Pets.com or a suburban development had some value, albeit overinflated, the $130 billion crypto"currency" market cap is absurd. It is going to crash to near the $0 mark at some point. As Keynes noted though, markets can remain irrational longer than you and I can remain solvent.