Less than a year ago, a single bitcoin, the most popular digital currency, could be purchased for less than $1,000. This month it touched almost $20,000 on some digital asset exchanges, and recently has been trading for about $15,000.
To put things in perspective, it took nearly seven years for bitcoin to reach the price it fetched in January before this bull run. And the current market capitalisation of cryptocurrencies represents “only” half a trillion dollars, a mere drop in the ocean of the global financial services industry which is worth many multiples of that. The most ludicrous projections are being extrapolated from the growth of the past few months.
The voices of professional optimists are countered by warnings from Cassandras made uncomfortable by the exponential rise of cryptocurrencies. Both sides fail to see the significance of the adoption of such currency by millions of people around the world in 2017.