Michael RodriguezJames MaughnEnglish 1AMay 20, 2015 bitcoin fantasyThe Nation. ARE DIGITAL CURRENCIES THE FUTURETHE FUTURE OF MONEY? BY DOUGHENWOOD Which is being touted in some circles when the future of money seems little more peaceful than its past. Bitcoin, a once-obscure cyber-currency, is now making headlines with reports of bankruptcies, thefts and FBI freezes. If our destiny is to buy and sell bitcoins, this instability is troubling. But despite the headlines, the triumph of Bitcoin and related cybercurrencies is far less likely than recent commentary suggests. One of the causes of all this May 19, 2014 13 DAN REISMAN hype? The number of people who understand what Bitcoin is seems almost immeasurably small – and it is likely that it will introduce regulators and insurance schemes, and Bitcoin will lose all its anarcho charm. Keynes once called gold “part of the apparatus of conservatism” for its appeal to gold-loving rentiers. austerity because it preserves the value of their assets. Bitcoin serves a similarly totemic purpose for today's cyber-libertarians, who love not only its statelessness as a currency, but also its power to subject the institutional banking system to "disruption" (one of the favorite words from this set). And like gold, Bitcoin is deflationary. There is a limit to the number of bitcoins that can be produced, and it becomes increasingly difficult to produce them over time until this limit is reached. Of course, new cryptocurrencies could emerge. But the existence of this limit reflects the deflationary sympathies of the libertarian spirit: in a Bitcoin economy, creating money to alleviate an economic depression would be impossible. Which is not to say that only libertarians like Bitcoin. To get a taste of cyber-libertarianism in its natural habitat, I ventured to a Christmas party on December 19th hosted by Cryptos.com, a business incubator for Bitcoin. Many had day jobs in technology or finance. . They were mostly men (but not overwhelmingly) and mostly white. Only one person wore Google Glass. According to national surveys of unproven rigor, your typical Bitcoin enthusiast is a libertarian white male in his thirties, although the same survey found that 39% of the fan base is left-wing in one certain meaning. The group at the Christmas party, probably because of their activity... there, was a little more diverse. Cryptos.com founder Nick Spanos worked on two cell phones. When I introduced myself and turned on my iPhone's voice recorder, Spanos was uncooperative: "I don't talk to reporters I don't know." Turn the thing off. After I did, he told me the place was full of Bitcoin millionaires, ten of them under the age of 21. When I asked what types of companies they worked in, he said, “All kinds.” That was the end of the interview: a crypto promoter for a cryptocurrency. Another attendee, Marshall Swatt, chief technology officer at Coinsetter, a Bitcoin trading platform for institutional investors, was more helpful. Swatt told me that after building trading platforms for established Wall Street institutions, he was looking for something more entrepreneurial. When I asked him if