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Apparently SAT tests, which are like IQ tests in principle, don’t account for excessive risk taking. Where’s the evidence for this? Cryptocurrencies offer a hint.

You see, over the past few months, more than one-fifth of American college students have invested their student loans in cryptocurrencies like bitcoin. The bitcoin market is heading for the danger zone, which suggests many American students will have to survive on a diet of leftovers and early bird specials for the next while.

Such has been the siren song appeal of the bitcoin market (and other cryptocurrency markets) that many college students have decided that bitcoins are better than study. There’s no other way to interpret the data published by The Student Loan Report, which ran a survey asking “have you ever used your student loans to ‘invest’ in cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin?” (Source: “College students use financial aid money to invest in bitcoin,” CNBC, March 23, 2018.)

Cryptocurrencies were no doubt the hot investment item of 2017. Will they continue to be in 2018? The jury is still out. But students, and young people in general, have a special attraction for bitcoins. They like the idea of a fully digital currency, which they can manage from a smartphone.

Where’s the Bitcoin Roller Coaster Heading?

One of the signs that students should have been smart enough to notice is that Bitcoin’s rise has been anything but gradual, let alone sensible. The biggest jump toward the lofty peaks of the $20,000 record price occurred in the span of a month or two.

At the time of writing, Bitcoin has crossed the $8,000 floor and continues to drop. Its value has increased 600-fold since 2013, based on. . .well, that’s the problem. Nobody knows. After all, when there are concerns over interest rates, lower dollar or just good old-fashioned risk factors, which warrant flights to safety, gold has fulfilled the role of refuge investment. Bitcoin might have earned the reputation as the investment that sticks it ‘to the Man’. But, judging from its recent performance, it’s more than likely to ‘stick it’ to its fans and speculators.