IT'S EVERYTHING OR NOTHING

Cryptocurrencies are no longer illegal in India but they’re still out of the regulatory ambit. Extreme volatility and lack of government support make it a tightrope walk for investors

- Jyotika Sood, Vishav & Yagnesh Kansara

“The ascent of money has been essential to the ascent of man.” - Niall Ferguson in The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World

As human civilisation progressed from barter deals to paper tenders and then to online transactions, we moved towards binary wealth. We evolved in sync with the evolution of money and reached the age of cryptocurrencies.

The death of a young chief executive of a Canadian cryptocurrency exchange cost his clients $250 million simply because his password could not be cracked. Gerald W Cotten did not share with anyone the access to his offline folder where he had stashed the investors’ money to fend offpirates. At the end of a long fight to recover their money, the investors had to accept the loss. There was none to redress their grievance.

Welcome to the unbound and unregulated wild world of cryptocurrency where fate hangs in a fine balance and fortune is encrypted.

From buying a Bentley to losing it all – investors in the crypto space have had myriad experiences along the course of their journey. Traders booked a record loss of $4.53 billion on May 19 alone and $14.2 billion for the week when the market crashed nearly 50 per cent amid a frenetic sell-offby investors, who had pumped $17 billion into the industry in the last six months. The untamed volatility of cryptocurrencies resembles that of a wild stallion – more unpredictable than the charging bulls or the biting bears of the stock market. And, there’s no watchdog to control the $1.33-trillion market.