Crytomania continues this week, with prices roaring and news of broke buyers using credit cards and loans against their homes to get in– classic financially-suicidal behaviors.

Bizarre as all of this may seem, manufacturing digital credits is reminiscent of what governments have been doing with a vengeance the past decade in issuing and selling treasury bonds to financial intermediaries, collecting the cash, and then funneling it to central banks to buy bonds and other securities off those same financial intermediaries (QE). Corporations too have been issuing bonds to raise cash to buy back their own shares and drive up their market price.These are the speculative cheerleaders of our time.

Different from government and corporate securities though, cryptocurrencies have no physical assets or claim on future cash flow backing their notional value at all. Cryptos only have value to the extent they can be exchanged for goods and services or for another currency at a higher rate than one paid to acquire it.

In a survey last month, just 8% of bitcoin holders said they planned to use bitcoin to buy goods and services. Most said it was a ‘store of value’ or an investment, but 56% said they intended to hold on to their bitcoin for less than 3 years and would convert it back to their home currency after the credits had risen further in value. And although more businesses are acquiescing to requests from crypto advocates to accept alt-coins as payment, most are only doing so on the premise that they are liquid and can be easily converted to the local currency in which they pay their operating expenses.

In practical terms, we need the bulk of our assets and income in the same currency unit in which we pay our bills. If some people come to earn their income in a cryptocurrency and pay their bills in the same unit without facing the cost and need for costly conversions and intermediaries, then perhaps it may make sense for them to do so. But the time-old concerns of safety, security and liquidity are likely to remain.