Bitcoin: Great Libertarian Hope or Co-opted By Wall Street?

By Reason TV

“People were telling the libertarians to shut up,” says New York Times reporter Nathaniel Popper, “but they were the only ones willing to put their money on the line and keep Bitcoin alive.”

Popper’s new book, Digital Gold: Bitcoin and the Inside Story of the Misfits and Millionaires Trying to Reinvent Money, tells the story of how the “cryptocurrency” went from an idea sketched out by an anonymous programmer in a nine-page whitepaper in the summer of 2008 to a global phenomenon with multi-million-dollar investments staked on its potential.

Some believe Bitcoin will be as transformative as the Internet itself while others—including many governments and traditional investors and analysts—see it as a threat or scam that should be shutdown or heavily regulated.

Reason TV’s Nick Gillespie sat down with Popper to talk about rise of Bitcoin and its underlying blockchain technology, which advocates say has virtually unlimited application.

Visit Reason.com