I have never understood bitcoins and why they aren’t Monopoly money that people choose to take seriously, because why. But then, I could argue that “real” money is no different. Finance is an elaborate fantasy, as far as I’m concerned. It affects us only because we’ve all agreed to play along.
I take it bitcoins have a libertarian appeal, in that they aren’t subject to awful government regulation or taxes. But then, aren’t these the same people who want to return to the gold standard? Whatever.
Apparently hackers have been draining a major bitcoin site for months and redirecting millions of actual dollars’ worth of the whatever they are, amounting to 6 percent of all the bitcoins in the world. So lots of people have lost a ton of money, or “money.” Because they are unregulated, they are also unprotected.
Bitcoin was, of course, created in part to cater to libertarian dreams — to provide a way to store your wealth where governments can’t steal it through taxation or currency debasement.
And it’s true! Thanks to Bitcoin, you can instead have your wealth stolen by private hackers.
D’oh!
The Austrian-school-bots at Reason think this is just a minor setback for bitcoins. And if enough of them think that way, it probably is, because it’s all Tinkerbelle. Bitcoins will live as long as there are those who believe.