SIMON BROWN: Didn’t you get the meme?
The hype, the hustle, and the harsh reality of crypto
13 March 2025 - 05:00
Bitcoin launched in January 2009 and, as such, is now a surly teenager but, in reality, still a young financial product if you consider shares, bonds, gold and the like have all been around for centuries.
Of course, these days it is no longer just bitcoin. CoinMarketCap has details of nearly 11,000 crypto coins of various types and a total market cap of almost $3-trillion. The market cap seems large, but consider two points. First, more than half is bitcoin, with number two, ethereum, only a little over a quarter of a billion dollars. But perhaps, considering the hype around crypto, the real surprise is just how small it is, with the entire $3-trillion crypto market cap being less than either Apple, Microsoft or Nvidia...
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