What Are Digital Assets and Crypto Assets?

Digital asset is a term that describes any asset in a digital form. Crypto assets are digital assets that utilize the technology behind cryptocurrencies.

It works like this:

• All cryptocurrencies are crypto assets, all crypto assets are digital assets.
• Not all digital assets are crypto assets, and not all crypto assets are cryptocurrencies.

With a traditional cryptography-based asset like Bitcoin is meant to be used as a currency, so it really is a “crypto” “currency.”

However, there are many assets commonly thought of as “cryptocurrencies” that really aren’t meant to be used as currencies at all.

Some are utility tokens not meant to be used as investments (in theory), some are tokenized assets that are meant to have value but aren’t meant to be used as a currency, we have cryptokitties, tokenized securities, tokenized gold, etc.

Because so many different types of assets (things of value) can be tokenized, “crypto assets” is a better term to describe the whole category of crypto things with value than “cryptocurrencies” (that said, people generally use the term cryptocurrencies to describe all crypto-based assets anyways; so, don’t be a stickler about it).

Meanwhile, not every digital asset necessarily needs to rely on cryptography, and thus an even broader category is digital assets. If it has value, and is digital, it is a digital asset.

A video game account that is leveled up might fetch a higher price than a level 1 account, or one skin for an esports game might fetch a higher price than another. These things are digital assets, but they aren’t crypto assets.