Who’s afraid of bitcoin?
In association with BitMex.
Gangsters’ paradise?
Washing a million crisp, cocaine-tainted banknotes is no easy feat these days. Walk up to a teller and attempt to deposit them in a bank and there’s a good chance you’ll be turned away and the police called. You could, I suppose, call Saul, your friendly diamond dealer, and try to wash your ill-gotten gains
The wildmen of bitcoin: that’s right, not all money men wear suits
Bitcoin, we’re told endlessly, is both the currency of choice for tax-dodging criminals and a vehicle to instant wealth for incautious dreamers (who in reality are destined to lose their money). But that’s not how many of the entrepreneurs who have latched onto it see things. There’s a kind of utopian ideology emerging from crypto-currencies.
Beyond democracy: could seasteads and cryptocurrencies replace the nation state?
For the past 20 years I’ve been working to enable start-up societies: permanent autonomous zones on land or at sea intended to accelerate economic development and to serve as laboratories for voluntary political experiments. For just as long (in fact since I first read The Sovereign Individual), I’ve been interested in the potential of digital cash,
Breaking the bank | Who’s afraid of bitcoin?
Sam Reed, 29, is co-founder and chief technology officer of the Bitcoin Mercantile Exchange (BitMEX), the largest crypto trading platform, and the 26th-largest exchange of any type in the world. His story — of how he went from itinerant web developer to co-founder of what some have called the ‘Goldman Sachs of bitcoin’ — is
The problem bitcoin solves
Paul Krugman, blogger, fiat-currency enthusiast and winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics earlier this year justified his scepticism about cryptocurrencies in the New York Times. He asked readers to give him a clear answer to the question: what is the problem cryptocurrency solves? He wrote: ‘Governments have occasionally abused the privilege of creating fiat money, but
All change: is the bitcoin revolution coming?
An elaborate scam for ripping off gullible investors. A black-market currency for gun-runners, drug dealers, pimps and terrorists. A bubble that makes a 17th-century Dutch tulip look like a solid investment, and a drain on global energy. There are so many different ways the digital currency bitcoin is going to destroy the world it’s sometimes
Editor’s letter | Who’s afraid of bitcoin?
It wasn’t so long ago that only the most committed bores spoke of money in abstract terms: money as a mere ‘concept’ (the rest of us got on with earning it). Today, that’s not the case. Thanks to bitcoin, everybody seems to have accepted money really is just an idea, one that in its current,