Doug Casey on Cryptocurrencies: "They're a Speculative Medium"

2017 has certainly been a hot year for cryptocurrencies with crypto trailblazers like bitcoin reaching highs of nearly $3,000 a token, while ethereum has soared above $390. Recently, however, digital currencies recorded record lows and even lost significant amounts in market cap. 
For example, while bitcoin has rallied from $959.14 on January 1 to its high of $2,910.56 on June 11, on Sunday (July 16), the digital currency dropped as low as $1,758.20.  The story is similar for ethereum: the cryptocurrency started the year at $8.38 a token and reached its high of $391.31 on June 13, but also took a hit over the weekend, falling 20 percent to $130.26.
By Wednesday (July 19), the two digital currency mammoths were back on track, with bitcoin reaching $2,273.23, while ethereum soared back above $200 a token to $202.52.

With that in mind, Doug Casey of Casey Research recently did a video interview with Kitco News to discuss this year’s “crypto-craze.”
When asked whether he considers them currencies, Casey said “they’re a speculative medium,” and that [you] should “consider them like penny stocks and treat them that way.”
“They’ve been … a fantastic, unbelievable bull market where people have not gotten just 100-to-1, but 1,000-to-1,” Casey continued. “More than that, these things have blossomed like mushrooms after a rainstorm.”
Casey also said that cryptocurrencies are an “excellent way” to transfer assets between countries, highlighting that they’re low cost and work instantly. That said, Casey added that [you] can’t “buy them now and look at them as a stored value.”
For more on what Casey had to say, watch the video below:

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Securities Disclosure: I, Jocelyn Aspa, hold no direct investment interest in any company mentioned in this article.