Mad Money The virtual currency bitcoin is surging in value. Is it a bubble or the future of cash?

摘要

ON NOV. I, 2008, IN THE teeth of the financial crisis, a person or people using the name Satoshi Nakamoto posted to a cryptography mailing list a proposal describing a virtual currency. The post was both an elegant piece of software engineering and a scathing indictment of the fiscal status quo. Bitcoin, as Nakamoto (whose identity remains unknown) called it, would be "completely decentralized, with no central server or trusted parties, because everything is based on crypto proof instead of trust." Governments couldn't debase it. Banks couldn't blow it. This was currency for a posttrust world.