Costs and benefits

Cryptos are speculative but underlying tech has merits

Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Governor Shaktikanta Das, speaking at the Business Standard BFSI Insight Summit on Wednesday, was unequivocal in underlining the risks in cryptocurrencies. He went so far as to say that private cryptos — originally conceptualised as a way to disrupt regulated fiat currencies — might set off the next major financial crisis. These presented a danger, he said, as they were not anchored to anything and were “100 per cent speculative”. The crypto universe may indeed have started to unravel. The collapse of the FTX exchange is a cautionary tale. Other major cryptocurrency exchanges, including Binance,