Life changing money. That’s what happened to John Ratcliff. In 2013 the software developer from Colorado purchased 150 Bitcoin. Today, his $15,000 bet is worth millions as the price of cryptocurrencies (crypto) skyrocketed. Another individual who also came into life-changing money this year is Vitalik Buterin. The 27-year-old college dropout and co-founder of Ethereum is now the world’s youngest crypto billionaire as Ether went from $130 in 2020 to over $4,000 in 2021.

Stories like Ratcliff’s and Buterin’s have led to a crush of demand for the popular new asset class. To be sure, rapid price appreciation in crypto over the past year has prompted heightened media attention and arguably is fueling frenzied behavior among some market participants in tokens like Bitcoin, Ethereum, and even Dogecoin for fear of missing out.

But what exactly are cryptocurrencies? And more importantly, do they belong in a retirement portfolio?

That’s what we’ll talk about in today’s podcast.