When something new comes along in Finance, it can be fun to watch market participants line up to present themselves as experts, quick to provide “insight” into what the future will hold. Over the past few weeks, voluminous ink has been spilt over the confluence of rising inflation and nascent digital currencies, both of which remain conceptually new for the related industries. Within the intersection of the Venn diagram representing the two conversations is the suspected ability of digital currencies to provide protection against inflation. While there may be some semblance of protection against dollar-based inflation offered by the inflation of digital assets, that’s likely to be proved a mirage. Indeed, the price action in Bitcoin, alone, over the summer months suggests as much. But such data likely will prove weakly influential for crypto-apostles. And while our takes on digital currencies are not entirely negative, more comprehensive (and more nuanced), we find the weakness of the “protects against inflation” argument is another reminder that investors should seek always the best tool for specific tasks within the portfolio.

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