There can be few better examples of a purely speculative asset in today’s capitalist economy than cryptocurrency. That hasn’t stopped the crypto market from surging to an all-time high, even after its crisis of 2022, when roughly $2 trillion of crypto assets were wiped out. Donald Trump’s administration is now determined to promote crypto with all the tools at its disposal.

Having spent vast sums on lobbying and campaign donations, the cryptocurrency industry, for all its libertarian pretensions, is now inextricably linked to the political class in Washington, DC. Ramaa Vasudevan is a Catalyst editorial board member and the author of Things Fall Apart: From the Crash of 2008 to the Great Slump. She told us about the mainstreaming of crypto and the risks that are building up across the whole financial system as a result.