I don't have much of an opinion on cryptocurrency one way or the other. I find it baffling though that the price of cryptos like Bitcoin have values that are not tied to any real assets of any sort. You can't measure them against the performance of a company( such as in shares), they don't equate to any value-adding activity (such as manufacturing), they have no inventory behind them, they have no rental return and so forth.

They rely on sentiment only. People invest hoping that the price will rise allowing them to sell at a profit. What happens after that is of no concern to them as long as the offload has been financially successful. If this sounds a little bit like a Ponzi scheme then you would be right - it has some of the elements. Sure, there are the actual crypto coins, which are laboriously mined on computers, which exist as digital entities. But the lack of an underlying mechanism to price them means that prices fluctuate at the whim of a government announcement or the endorsement of a celebrity. And the fact that investors rely on the next tranche of investors after them to garner a profit, if they are lucky, sounds somewhat pyramidic.

Younger people are particularly vulnerable to such high-risk investing. Priced out of the property market and with interest rates historically low, they must be sorely tempted to buy Bitcoin in the hope of making enough to buy a house or at least get a deposit. They might or they might not. And in the end, someone, surely, will be holding the much devalued baby.

I guess that I do have an opinion, after all.