A Calm Analysis of Bitcoins as a Currency

I got quite a bit of backlash for writing a couple of days ago about bitcoin (post here). My criticisms were fairly mild—I’m not unsympathetic to the drive behind making bitcoin work.

“Where’s bitcoin?”
Uh . . .

But even such mild criticism of the bitcoin enterprise was enough for some of the bitcoin-faithful to denounce me as a heretic, or worse, an apostate. Or worse, a shill for the banksters and their minions. Or worse still, a fucking idiot who didn’t know shit-all about bitcoins and what they represent—the future!

Okay . . .

To be clear, I am not against bitcoin, or any other of the so-called “cryptocurrencies” (cybercurrency sounds more accurate, but I’ll stick with the current convention). Neither in principle nor in practice do I object to these immaterial, manufactured, fiat currencies. Hell, I’ve had a bitcoin wallet since 2011, when I parked a few hundred bucks in it when it was at $8 a BTC.

So I’m fine with bitcoin—but I’m not a mindless cheerleader for the thing.

When talking about bitcoin, cognoscenti have to admit, and neophytes have to understand, that bitcoin does not do all that people claim it does. Far from it, bitcoins and other cryptocurrencies are severely limited.

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