Taking a punt on cryptocurrencies? Watch these risks before putting your hard-earned money

This is probably an obsession of the highest order. Despite the extreme volatility intrinsic to their nature, regulatory barriers, scams, questions raised by fund managers globally over their future as an asset class, and other factors, the interest cryptocurrencies have continued to garner globally is almost unparalleled. Otherwise, it sounds crazy for something super speculative, digital-only, and just around a decade old, to have a market cap more than that of legacy financial services firms such as Visa, JPMorgan Chase, Mastercard, and more, as per data available at CompaniesMarketCap. “It’s a store of value like gold that is more religion than solution to any problem,” the billionaire entrepreneur Mark Cuban had told Forbes in December last year. While it is true for one to become…