Bitcoin: Difference between revisions

{{a|crypto|

===[[Bitcoin]] isn’t a [[currency]]===

[[Cash]], as you’ll know if you’ve had the pleasure of the [[JC]]’s [[Cash|frequent tedious perorations on the subject]], is a special, elusive thing. It is the foundational fabric of [[trust]] in the financial system — the leap of intellectual faith that all merchants make, that their goats, or furnishings, or hovercraft, can be fully and equally represented in economic terms by a thing of vanishingly immaterial aspect<ref>Want to go deeper? There’s an analogue between the separation of cash’s value from its [[substrate]], and the final separation of [[information]] from its [[substrate]].</ref> — printed paper, small items of minted copper, electronic impulses on a ledger — such that one can attend a market without the messy business of barter or other exchange of articulated things. A currency is a kind of derivative: an articulation of abstract, distilled ''value''. All other things being equal, if you accept a florin for a bushel of your wheat, you can expect to give that same florin to someone else for an equivalent bushel of ''their'' wheat. Thus, one needs a consensual ''trust'' in your token of value — that it really is worth something now, that it will be worth that same amount tomorrow, and that any other merchant you might find in the market tomorrow will share your opinion.

===It isn’t an asset===

{{sa}}

*[[Crypto-currency]]

*[[Non-fungible token]]