Bitcoin’s highest value was at the end of 2017, when it skyrocketed over 220 percent in Q4. It peaked on December 17, 2017, at US$19,783, before dropping almost 50 percent in the next two months.

Despite its ups and downs, interest in Bitcoin remains strong. The market has largely been dominated by retail investors, but more interest is now coming from institutional investors. As part of that shift, security tokens are taking on a growing role.

Jeff Ramson, CEO and founder of PCG Advisory, told the Investing News Network (INN) that, with the world becoming increasingly interconnected and digitized, owning digital currencies as a store of value could align with this digital progression.

“When it comes to Bitcoin, there’s a finite supply that’s transportable and, in a digital age, there’s an acceptance of it as a store of value. So, I think that there’s more and more institutional investors coming into the space, so, as it gets more accepted, you’re going to see a natural bid to the marketplace,” he said.

In terms of how to approach Bitcoin, some investors view the cryptocurrency as akin to a digital gold.

“The term cryptocurrency is actually very misleading to a lot of people because some people believe that Bitcoin has been created potentially to remove the use of the US dollar, but that’s not at all what it was intended to be. You may have heard Bitcoin being described as digital gold and that’s a much better kind of way of looking at it,” Henry James, deputy CEO of Fincross International, told INN.

Beyond digital assets is the security tokens market, which has drawn remarkable interest over the past year. Security tokens represent an asset or utility. They may be backed by assets such as gold or government-issued currencies, or could represent a utility such as a right, a vote, an entry into an ecosystem or the ability to serve a certain function within a network.

In 2018, security tokens offerings raised US$380 million, says Decrypt Media. tZERO, an alternate trading system and subsidiary of Overstock.com (NASDAQ:OSTK), raised US$143 million alone in October.