According to Forbes' cyber currency blog, Crypto Watch, the latest contender in the cryptocurrency competition is Cardano, a blockchain project which uses the coin currency Ada. Ada has shown an over 100% rise in value in the last 24 hours, and is currently the 6th largest cryptocurrency in the world.

Since the Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE) opened for futures trading in bitcoin on December 10th, the cyber currency market has gone crazy, with Bitcoin reaching towards $20,000 in market value and other currencies vying for a place in the bull market. CBOE has offered free trading for the first three weeks; a nice Christmas present for speculators, pre-empting Chicago's other financial exchange, CME (Chicago Market Exchange), which just finalised its arrangements to open for futures trading the following week, December 18th.

All this trading frenzy has two possible outcomes: sceptics are likening it to an over-extension like the financial bubble events of the past, including Tulip Mania, the South Sea Bubble and the dot-com explosion. Others, however, are suggesting that we are seeing a quantum leap in financial behaviour which opens the way to a distributed ledger technology, and the fintech capabilities of blockchain.