Civilization is Bitcoin.
Is Bitcoin for real? In other words: do you think cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin are as transformative an innovation as the Internet browser? That digital currencies can replace the dollar like Google replaced the encyclopedia?
Or do you think that Bitcoin is more like . . . Beanie babies? A bubble driven by overhyped mania that will burst as all bubbles do?
These are the questions I have been asking myself, perhaps like you, for the past few years with increasing urgency. Half the wealthy people I know argue that it’s a fad — one that is going to cost a lot of normal people a lot of pain. The other half insist it is the future of finance. And they are investing accordingly.
I am a person that until very recently did not have a credit card, so I will not pretend to be an expert on real currency, let alone cryptocurrency. I continue to swing back and forth between “This thing is like Pokemon!” to “Ok, I think I see how this thing can replace the money in my pocket.”
The reason I am extremely interested in this topic is that there are some profound political questions at its heart: Are centralized systems better than decentralized one? What areas of our public and private lives should the government have control over? What guardrails does freedom require?
