Suppose you had invested in a basket of the biggest cryptocurrencies five years ago, in early May 2021. You would have bought Bitcoin (BTC +0.56%) near $56,000, Ethereum (ETH 0.16%) near $3,400, XRP (XRP +1.75%) about $1.60, Solana (SOL +3.34%) at $45, and Dogecoin (DOGE +4.10%) near $0.40. Those were the coins with the most buzz and the most liquidity, and, in some cases, the strongest fundamental arguments, and optimism about their future was widely prevalent, and somewhat reasonable.

Fast-forward five years. Buying the stock market via an S&P 500 index fund returned about 85% in that period, outperforming all of those cryptocurrencies except for Solana. With results like those, it’s no wonder investors are losing patience with crypto…