IT SEEMED like a good idea. Why not mark our special report on digital money by putting the price in Bitcoin on the magazineās cover? Alas, it was not to be.
Our money people werenāt keen to add a currency whose value might plummet (or rocket) at any time. We werenāt sure how weād process payments. And we couldnāt find a stockist who would accept Bitcoin anyway.
That pretty much sums up where Bitcoin is today. Mainstream interest is growing fast, but its value remains volatile and its infrastructure embryonic (see āProblems already cloud the currencyās futureā). As our reporter found during a Bitcoin-funded road trip, you canāt yet use it to buy much in the ārealā world without tedious workarounds ā scarcely the seamless payment system you might expect, and no match for cash or cards (see āCan you live on virtual money for a day?ā).
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Bitcoin itself may never rise to this challenge. Its foundations, so daringly different to those of traditional currencies, may be too weak to support meaningful financial activity. It may end up co-opted by Silicon Valley and Wall Street, as previous financial innovations have been, or even by a desperate nation (see āThree scenarios forecast the future of moneyā).
But Bitcoin is not the only game in town. It has inspired others to build systems that will enable a much wider range of applications. Some, such as insurance, will be familiar; others, such as cloud storage or self-driving cars, are barely related to what we think of as finance at all (see āHow its core technology will change the worldā).
The common denominator of all these applications ā and the real value of the Bitcoin experiment ā is a digital basis for trust: the āblock chainā, which allows transactions to be recorded without reams of red tape. Get rid of the red tape, and you could also get rid of those who make money by dealing with it.
So by opening up the Bitcoin protocol to the world, āSatoshi Nakamotoā, its mysterious inventor, may have democratised finance ā much as open internet protocols have democratised communication. If so, itās not just the billions of dollars invested in Bitcoin that are at stake, but the very nature of money itself.
āItās not just the billions of dollars invested in Bitcoin that are at stake, but the nature of money itselfā
One modest upshot: you may soon be able to buy your copy of Ā鶹“«Ć½ with any currency of your choice. Or, for that matter, with a currency of your own.
This article appeared in print under the headline āNot small changeā
