Ken quoted in Barron's Advisor on Cryptocurrency speculation.

Several financial advisors were recently asked for our views on investing in cryptocurrency by Barron's Advisor. 

You can view the whole article here, but it requires a login. If you don't want to create an account, here's what I told Barron's:

The short answer is that I would not recommend it. If a client happens to have some, I would encourage them to limit it to no more than anything else that we would consider a speculation.

Accepting that cryptocurrency is a kind of currency means that investing in it depends on whether it makes sense to invest in currencies at all. And the enormous majority of households should not be investing in currency. In fact, when we talk about exchanging money for currency of another country, we don’t talk about currency investing, we talk about currency speculation. If a client hasn’t been actively engaged in trading sovereign currencies, in trading U.S. Dollars or yen or euros, for example, then why are they suddenly experts in trading a currency that isn’t even issued by a sovereign state?

What makes currency worth something is everybody agreeing that it’s worth something. And that needs to be an enormous group of people for the value to not have significant swings. And if there are significant swings up, there can be significant swings down. If we want it to be money, then it should be more stable than that. On the other hand if we want it to be an investment, it should have some kind of intrinsic value, like a company that has a proven stream of revenue, or a mutual fund that is made up of a bunch of companies. Cryptocurrency has none of that. And not only that, but you’re trading currency that appeals to felons. Maybe it isn’t intentionally designed that way, but it’s the preferred way to pay people who invade your computer and lock you out of it.

- Ken Robinson