In 2015, Greece became the first developed economy in the world to default on its debt. Since then, we've seen many economies such as Lebanon, Venezuela, and Sri Lanka collapsing and with them, we've seen their currencies collapsing as well. Now, even if one worked extremely hard and earned a lot of money, just because they were born in a specific country and that country defaulted on its debt could determine if their entire life's savings could become worthless seems unfair.

The logical solution seems like converting the collapsed currency into some other currency such as USD. But by the time one figures out that they need to do this, either the currency has already lost a lot of its value or the government has decided to freeze bank accounts.

So another solution seems to be to always store some of one's savings in other currencies. But one needs to pay forex and other conversion charges and then comes the problem of storing it. If one stores it in the bank, one again runs the same risk as stated above.

As we look at all the roadblocks, the common denominator comes out to be one central authority, the govt., having the power to control the banks and how efficiently and well the economy performs. As more and more countries are defaulting on their debt, people are losing faith in their government and are looking for ways to save and even grow their money without the risk of a central authority having the potential of its wipe out.

The answer comes in the form of crypto-currencies. Cryptos are decentralized virtual or digital currencies that allow people to store and grow their wealth. There are many advantages to cryptos that make them attractive:

  1. They allow quick and hassle-free transfer of funds from one country to another without having to pay any form of bank charges.
  2. Bitcoin, one of the major cryptos has been around since 2009 and is highly secure.
  3. As this is a nascent asset class, the upside of exponential growth is high.
  4. Acts as a good asset for portfolio diversification.

Cryptos are still at a nascent stage and different countries are trying to wrap their heads around them. On one end of the spectrum, some countries have fully banned crypto-currencies such as China, and then are some such as El Salvador that have accepted Bitcoin as a legal tender, although the high volatility of bitcoin is causing El Salvador some problems. Nevertheless, most countries such as US and India are discussing how to regulate and tax cryptos which means they understand that cryptos are here to stay at least for the near future.