Is There a Cryptocurrency Bubble? Just Ask Doge.<br />But if he did, he might channel Doge to offer a few cautionary words for investors who<br />are falling for cryptocurrency start-ups, Silicon Valley’s latest moneymaking craze:<br />Mr. Palmer, the creator of Dogecoin, was an early fan of cryptocurrency, a form of encrypted digital money that is traded from person to person.<br />The Securities and Exchange Commission warned investors this year about the growing number of coin offerings, saying<br />that “fraudsters often try to use the lure of new and emerging technologies to convince potential victims to invest their money in scams.”<br />Mr. Palmer predicts that while some I. C.O.s may finance the creation of new and exciting enterprises, many will go up in smoke.<br />C.O., a type of fund-raising campaign in which investors buy into a new venture using Bitcoin or another cryptocurrency<br />and receive virtual “tokens” instead of stock or voting rights in the company.<br />“It’s become a securities market.”<br />Other high-profile skeptics have sounded the alarm about a potential crash in the crypto market, including Jamie Dimon, the chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, who last week called Bitcoin a “fraud,”<br />and compared the current digital money craze to the 17th-century Dutch tulip bubble.<br />When Mr. Palmer’s interest in digital money began, just four years ago, cryptocurrency was the sole province of math geeks and early adopters.
