Cryptocurrencies: the dragons of the financial world

The principle of open source peer-to-peer software makes it possible for anyone, anywhere to take part in this activity, in the role of either a bookkeeper or a depositor, or both (see e.g., Dwyer, 2015). Since anyone is free to join and leave at will, and because the system has no owner, and because its creator is unknown, the system is not considered fraudulent in the same way as a Ponzi scheme. On a technological level, cryptocurrencies have breathed new life into the idea of peer-to-peer software, which became widely known over a decade earlier with the emergence of file-sharing applications. [...]despite the original idea of grass-root level sharing of computing resources, cryptocurrency networks have become highly industrialised commercial enterprises (Rauchs et al., 2018). In advanced economies, where financial markets, payment infrastructures, and regulatory oversight are well established and reliable, cryptocurrencies have remained on the fringes of the investment industry and are only flirting with the idea of becoming a serious asset class.