| As of this month, Bitcoins are worth over a billion dollars, and interest in the currency is skyrocketing. Here's everything you need to know about a currency that sounds like it belongs in a fantastical realm: You can't touch it, it's prized in the underworld, its creator disappeared in a cloud of mystery, and if you want to keep it safe, you should keep it hidden in a bunch of different places. |
Bitcoin was started in 2009 as a currency free from government controls, an entirely digital means of exchange for a digital age. It’s a rapidly growing phenomenon that has taken root as a payment method on some websites for both legal and illegal goods.
Each “coin” has been worth less than $10 for most of the currency’s history, but recently the value surged past $200 – with the recent bailout crisis in Cyprus seen by many as one of the triggers of the surge. This Wednesday Bitcoins “flash crashed,” and the value dipped close to $100 before recovering.
The meteoric rise in value is also linked to what some economists say is the biggest problem with the currency: that the supply of bitcoins increases only slowly, at a rate that’s coded into the system.
That’s a contrast to a regular paper currency like the dollar, whose supply is managed by a central bank like the Federal Reserve. The American Fed engineers the dollar supply to increase slightly faster than the growth of the economy, which means that the value of the dollar falls slightly every year, in the phenomenon known as inflation.
The Royal Canadian Mint has also adopted some of Bitcoin's philosophy. Still in the research and development phase, MintChip will ultimately let people pay each other directly using smartphones, USB sticks, computers, tablets and clouds. The digital currency will be anonymous and good for small transactions — just like cash, the Mint says.
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Since the supply of bitcoins grows so slowly, any increase in demand leads to higher prices. That’s known as deflation, and it’s widely seen as a disaster when it happens to a real-world currency. As money becomes more valuable, our incentive is to hold onto the money instead of spending it – slowing down the economy.
“What we want from a monetary system isn’t to make people holding money rich; we want it to facilitate transactions and make the economy as a whole rich. And that’s not at all what is happening in Bitcoin,” Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman wrote in 2011.
When the supply of money is fixed or increasing only slowly, deflation can feed on itself. Investors will look at the rising price of the coins, and conclude that they are set to rise further. So they buy more, sending the price even higher. This goes on until the market is sated. In the ideal outcome, the value of the currency then stabilizes at the new high level. In the worst case, the value plunges.
This boom-bust cycle has already happened once before for Bitcoin. It hit nearly $31 in June 2011, then crashed, hitting $2 five months later.
SOURCE Salon.com
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