I wonder if people are after a "hybrid hedge" -- not just asset preservation, but appreciation. Precious metals are sort of understood from a technical standpo

I wonder if people are after a "hybrid hedge" -- not just asset preservation, but appreciation. Precious metals are sort of understood from a technical standpoint. We're unlikely to discover a 600-metre-diameter orb of pure gold in the middle of Nebraska, and, conversely, we're not going to suddenly double our industrial demand for it. Once you strip out the "civilization will crumble and you'll have to use Krugerrands to buy ammo for your Mad Max-converted Prius" crowd, the hedge case for gold is more or less "Gold has a practical ceiling somewhere around 2000-inflation adjusted USD per ounce, and will stay near there indefinitely. Buy at 1800 today and hold it to avoid exposing yourself to dollar-denominated assets." Boring. In contrast, crypto offers the appeal of avoiding direct dollar exposure, with the excitement of speculation. If it turns out we build the next financial ecosystem on the random token you've chosen to back, there's way more upside than just "avoiding dollar risk." TBH, a lot of it is very stupid money chasing the moon though. A lot of people have had their risk tolerances out of whack for a long time. I suspect too-big-to-fail and the political mentality that if the S&P 500 goes down, the world ends may have reinforced this attitude, so we see people being more speculative than would be prudent.