But are they really? One way to answer that question is to imagine what would happen if their newfound wealth went “poof,” aside from sparking lots of schadenfreude that is.
The price of bitcoin—the most established of the private digital currencies—has risen about 290% over the past six months, but that is nothing compared with some other entrants.
On the one hand, that is dwarfed by the over $20 trillion in equity Americans have in their homes, or the more than $50 trillion value of the U.S.
They don’t provide a stream of income like the earnings that stocks generate and they aren’t fundamentally useful in the way that physical commodities such as copper are.