Briefly, bitcoin is the world's first cryptocurrency, invented in 2009 by somebody or some group who went by the name Satoshi Nakamoto. Nobody knows who Satoshi really is--he disappeared from public view in 2010.
All bitcoin transactions are kept in a public record called the blockchain, copies of which are spread on thousands of computers around the world. The fact that the blockchain is massively copied guarantees the security of bitcoin since no hacker can hack into all the globe's computers (or even a small fraction of them). Accordingly, bitcoin itself has never been hacked, though various exchanges and individuals have been hacked.
Bitcoin is produced by mining. Miners solve cryptographic puzzles, the purpose of which is to update the blockchain to reflect any new transactions. As a reward for assuming this transaction cost, miners receive payment in new bitcoins. This will continue until the middle of the next century, after which all bitcoins will have been mined. Then miners will have to charge a fee in exchange for their services. Meanwhile, the actual transaction cost is the electricity used to power the many thousands of computers that work on mining bitcoin. This is substantial, and today bitcoin is mined primarily in places with cheap electricity.
So now some basic facts follow:
Bitcoin is not anonymous, but merely pseudonymous. If you or I open a bitcoin wallet, it will have a public key that I have to distribute to anybody I want to trade bitcoin with. That key is a pseudonym for my name. Given that key, then all transactions to or from that wallet are public record as part of the blockchain.
Ross Ulbricht--the founder of the Silk Road drug market, using bitcoin as the medium of exchange--didn't understand that. By using good old fashioned shoe-leather, the police eventually connected his wallet to his name, and then of course they knew exactly who he'd sent money to and from. For that he is now serving a life sentence without parole. Since then the criminals have gotten smarter. They undoubtedly know how to launder bitcoin on the dark web, so the old shoe-leather trick won't work anymore.
Thus bitcoin, as a substitute for cash, becomes an important tool for many a criminal enterprise. That, of course, is a disadvantage for those of us who wish to live in a civilized world, but it is a use-value for bitcoin that won't be going away anytime soon.
Bitcoin is not very useful as a currency. Because mining is so expensive, it typically takes about 10 minutes for any transaction to clear. These days, with bitcoin so popular, it can take considerably longer. Nobody is gonna go to Starbucks and wait ten minutes for their cup of coffee, which is why Starbucks doesn't accept bitcoin.
Simply put, the transaction costs for bitcoin are too expensive to justify using it for small amounts of money. However, the cost is per transaction, and is not proportional to the amount of money transferred. So bitcoin is impractical for $1.85, but for $1.85 million it's another story. For large amounts the transaction costs become irrelevant.
This is very much like gold. Try taking your Krugerrand to Starbucks and see how far that gets you. For just as with bitcoin, transaction costs for gold are very high--you have to weigh it, judge it's purity, ship it, and so on. But unlike bitcoin, gold transactions don't get that much cheaper with volume. So while bitcoin is nowhere near as convenient as paper currency or a credit card, it is much more convenient than gold.
Bitcoin will steal some of gold's luster. Yes, gold is a shiny metal that you can hold in your hand, while bitcoin is a public/private key combination that you can store in your safe. Gold is more tangible, but that very tangibility is what makes it less useful. Perhaps a better analogy for bitcoin is GLD (a gold-based ETF), rather than gold itself. Though--and here's the big deal--bitcoin is much more secure than GLD.
Gold has historically been used to settle transactions across international borders. Because the shipping costs are so high, in recent times international trade has been settled in eurodollars (dollars held in bank accounts outside the United States). This is not satisfactory to many participants (China, Russia, Iran, to name but a few), and I predict that bitcoin will eventually become a medium for international settlements. This is a second use-value for bitcoin.
It's worth noting that both China and Russia are very schizophrenic about bitcoin. On the one hand they see it as an avenue for capital flight, and thus they want to prevent citizens from using the currency, much the same as the US for many years prohibited citizens from owning gold. On the other hand, they both recognize the potential bitcoin has to free them from the dollar, and both countries have invested in significant mining capacity.
Meanwhile, many citizens around the world have every incentive to get their money the hell out of Dodge. Most recently that appears to be happening in South Korea, which is now the biggest bitcoin market in the world (or so I'm led to believe). The Chinese have been no slouches either, and are likely still crypto-sneaking money out of their country. Venezuela and Zimbabwe are big markets for bitcoin, for obvious reasons. (In Venezuela electricity is heavily subsidized, making mining very profitable, albeit illegal.)
Volatility, Schmolatility. Doesn't matter. There is no better way to transport money outside your falling-apart country with relative speed, liquidity, safety and anonymity than bitcoin. This is a third major use-value for bitcoin.
What are some of the disadvantages of bitcoin? There are a few.
First, many bitcoins have been lost. Since there is no central authority, there is no way of recovering your private key if you lose it. Many people have lost it. And then many others have died before revealing the secret to any of their heirs. Satoshi himself, at the beginning of bitcoin-time, mined himself about a million bitcoins, today worth nearly $20 billion. None of them have ever been spent (we know that from the blockchain), and Satoshi would give himself away if he ever tried to spend one. Perhaps that's a reason to leave $20 billion sitting on the table untouched.
Or, possibly, maybe Satoshi is dead, in which case all those bitcoins are gone for good. If there is one shortcoming in his design, it was not allowing for the replacement of lost bitcoins. Only 21 million will ever be mined, but over time more and more of them will be lost. Eventually there will be so few bitcoins in the world that they'll become a collector's item rather than a currency.
I don't know what fraction of the currently extant 17 million bitcoins have been lost. I read somewhere that it was 50%--I think that's too high. But suppose it's only 25%--that means the total capitalization is not the top-line $325 billion, but instead only $244 billion. So if bitcoin is in a bubble, it's not as big a bubble as everybody thinks.
A second threat to bitcoin is the development of a rival cryptocurrency that adds significant value and so displaces bitcoin. There are lots of cryptocurrencies already out there, but the main ones all do something different than bitcoin. BCH, for example, tries to speed up the transaction speed. ETH is primarily about trading assets rather than currency. Etc. There is a place under the sun for these species. But bitcoin is the most gold-like precisely because it's transaction time is relatively slow (and thus secure), and it is the most liquid. I think it will be hard to displace, but not impossible.
So is bitcoin in a bubble? I don't know. There is nothing written here that says it ain't so. But I will claim this: bitcoin has use-value. It's not just a speculative bubble. The price will not to fall to zero, and the equilibrium price is probably higher than it is now--though it's unlikely to get there in a straight line.
It's worth pointing out that Bitcoin is not primarily an American phenomenon. Predicting its value based only on sentiment within the United States is not reliable.
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