IT’S A LAZY SUNDAY morning, and I’m away from my family, sitting in a hotel room in Montreal, and I’ve got $160,000 in my pocket. Or, rather, my “pocket.” With a few mouse clicks, I could liquidate my positions and transfer the proceeds (minus fees) into my bank account overnight. But here’s the rub: Twenty-four hours earlier, my portfolio, which I started six months ago with an investment of just $3,000, was worth less than $80,000. Overnight, one of my positions—a low-cap coin named Verge—caught fire on the Asian markets. By the same time tomorrow, that $80,000 might evaporate. Or double again. Welcome to the wild world of cryptocurrency. For every 1,000-times windfall, thousands more in investments have gone south over the past nine years, wiping out trading accounts and…
