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Message:: [QUOTE="-jeffB, post: 3196790, member: 27832"]You took a couple of swerves there in that last sentence. First, I don't think there's a big interest in collecting cryptocurrencies. People are getting into them in hopes of profit, except for those using them to avoid real or imagined government surveillance. And buying into cryptocurrencies, coins, or precious metals is speculation. You're speculating that what you buy today will be worth more tomorrow, and that you can turn that into profit. In reality, since there's overhead when you buy and when you sell, it's already hard to make a profit -- and those values can go down just as easily as they go up. People think they're "investing", but really, it's gambling. A lot of people are interested in coins as a way to make a profit. But I think more people are interested in them for the same reasons that drive collectors of anything else -- the compulsion to get and have something that's hard to find, or that's beautiful to look at, or that reminds them of their childhood. We're likely to lose that last motivator over the rest of this century, because I'm pretty sure electronic transactions will take over and drive cash out of circulation. That, if it happens, will have an impact on our hobby -- but it still won't kill it. After all, people still collect ancients that haven't circulated in hundreds or thousands of years.[/QUOTE]