In just one year's time, the combined market cap of all digital coins rocketed higher by nearly $600 billion, which works out to a more than 3,300% increase on a percentage basis. It's perhaps the greatest single-year performance we may ever witness for any asset class.

And over the centuries, there have been other pretenders for gold's throne (salt, florins or ducats, anyone?) but none has survived. The latest potential competitor for gold may be bitcoin, the cryptocurrency created in 2009 as open-source software for a decentralized form of payment.