For anyone interested in crypto, the CFA Institute just published an excellent document in my opinion to explain what crypocurrency is, what it is not, and what it might become in the future:
Even if you’re not into crypto, I would highly recommended at least reading the first three parts of the paper to understand how crypto works, what problems it tries to solve and why it could be so potentially valuable. The fourth part of the paper is a lot more financially technical (aka boring) and specifically related to how an investor can potentially incorporate crypto into their investment portfolio, but the last part (part 5) is also worth reading to understand a few key risks to crypto as an industry.
One key remark I want to share from the paper:
“The most impressive feature of bitcoin’s technical architecture is that it works. Ten years after this novel system design was first outlined by its anonymous author, the bitcoin blockchain has shown a track record of running and holding tens and even hundreds of billions of dollars of value securely and of processing only valid transactions, with nearly 100% uptime. The database has never been hacked and currently settles roughly the same value of transactions each year as PayPal, all without a single employee or central organizing figure. It is a true technical breakthrough—a significant advance in software and database design—and it is having a significant impact on the world.”
https://www.cfainstitute.org/-/media/documents/article/rf-brief/rfbr-cryptoassets.ashx
The hype is real, at least for now.
