“Selfie” was selected today as the word of the year by the Oxford English Dictionary’s editors, beating both “twerking” and “bitcoin.” Bitcoin’s company in that word list makes me appreciate the fact that others may be as sick of hearing about Bitcoin as I am about twerking. Nevertheless, it’s a pretty important week for Bitcoin, an I wanted to highlight some of the work I’ve been doing.
Yesterday the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee held a hearing on the promises and challenges that virtual currencies hold for consumers and law enforcement respectively. I testified at that hearing and video of my testimony is below. You can also check out the written testimony, which is an updated version of the Bitcoin primer for policymakers I wrote with Andrea Castillo earlier this year. And ahead of the hearing I published an op-ed in The Guardian arguing that if the U.S. doesn’t foster a sane regulatory environment for Bitcoin, entrepreneurs will go to other jurisdictions that do.
All in all the hearing was hearteningly positive. The federal regulators and law enforcement representatives all agreed that Bitcoin is a lawful and legitimate payments system and that it holds great promise. They also agreed that plain old cash and centralized virtual currencies (contra Bitcoin’s decentralized design) are much greater magnets for money laundering, and that they needed no new laws or authority to deal with illegal uses of Bitcoin. I discuss the hearing and its implications on today’s Cato Daily Podcast with Caleb Brown.
Finally, I think there are lots of folks, especially in the wonkosphere, who think they know what Bitcoin is, but really don’t, and so the opinions they offer about its viability or significance are based on misunderstanding. For example, Neil Irwin at Wonkblog today wrote a 700-word post to suggest that what Bitcoin needs is a central bank. Now, if he’s trolling, kudos to him. But I really think he’s innocently ignorant of the fact that Bitcoin’s seminal design feature is that it is a decentralized payments system, and that the moment you add a central banker (which would in any case be impossible) you would no longer have Bitcoin, but Facebook Credits or Microsoft Points or airline miles.
So, if you think you have an inkling about what Bitcoin is, but you’re not too sure, or you don’t know why it’s so significant, please check out my cover story in the December issue of Reason, which was just made available online. Apart from explaining the basics, I go into detail about the little understood fact that Bitcoin is much more than just money. Value transmission is just the most obvious use case for Bitcoin, and thus the one that’s being built out first, but the Bitcoin platform is essentially a decentralized ledger, so it is also able to support property registrations, decentralized futures markets, and much more.
And truly finally, if you want to keep up with all the happenings in Bitcoin, including the Senate Banking Committee hearing later today, check out MostlyBitcoin.com, a site a built for myself but that I hope is useful to others that tracks Bitcoin stories in the mainstream media.
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.