India, Jan. 29 -- All money is artificial, virtual and can collapse any time. History is witness to umpteen currencies crashing for some reason or the other. The only thing that keeps them afloat is trust. That's the same thing with cryptocurrencies. When they were introduced, if nobody had faith in them, then they would have simply sunk away. But enough people have trusted them in the last 15 odd years that they have become a force to reckon with.

Bitcoin was worth zero exactly at the time of release in 2009, but in 2025 it crossed a whopping $100k for a mind-boggling market capitalization of $2 trillion+. At the time of writing this article Ethereum was worth around $400 billion. The following had a mar cap of $100 billion or so: XRP, ...