Discussions of cryptocurrencies seem to be on everyone's lips, these days. Most of the opinions I am reading are against crypto. Stephen Diehl has spent so much time explaining the problems with cryptocurrencies, that he's outlined them in a blog post called The Case Against Crypto.

Cryptocurrencies aren’t currencies and have no mechanism to ever become currencies. They are effectively unregulated securities where the only purpose of the products is price appreciation untethered to any economic activity. The only use case is gambling on the random price oscillations, attempting to buy low and sell high and cash out positions for wins in a real currency like dollars or euros. Yet crypto cannot create or destroy real money because unlike a stock there is no underlying company that generates income. So if you sell your crypto and make a profit in dollars, it’s exactly because a greater fool bought it at a higher price than you did.

I remember many times people have tried to tell me that buying stocks is just gambling. Some people simply don't understand the purpose of an investment in a company that is creating value and being able to share a financial stake in that company's outcome. However, buying and selling cryptocurrency, as Diehl points out, does actually feel like gambling.