If your share portfolio was heavy with tech stocks last year, you likely closed out the year with some healthy gains. The Nasdaq stock exchange, home to the likes of Amazon, Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Tesla, closed the year with the value of its listed companies increasing 43%, thanks in large part to the hype surrounding artificial intelligence.
But that increase pales in comparison with the rise in value of cryptocurrencies, which collectively jumped over 100% in 2023 as the crypto winter came to an end.
Bitcoin, the most popular and valuable digital currency, climbed 160% to around US$45,000 for a single coin.
We have, of course, seen this sort of bull run often enough to know that it doesn't signal the looming mass adoption of digital, decentralised money. As much as I love the idea of using Bitcoin to pay for my groceries, bypassing the fee-hungry banks and credit card companies in the process, cryptocurrencies are still predominantly a speculative investment.
Technically, many offer methods of transferring value that are superior to the traditional financial systems that currently underpin the global economy.
But history is full of examples of leading technologies that failed to win the race against inferior rivals.
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