NEW YORK ¨C Bitcoin breaks my heart.
Not because I missed the great run-up (though I did) and not because I fear that the bitcoin bubble will end badly (it will, but that¡¯s not my problem). Rather, it is because I have been waiting for decades for someone to invent a purely digital currency, a currency for online purchases that wasn¡¯t linked to a credit card. It was the killer app that no one ever figured out.
Thus when bitcoin first emerged, I had hoped that it would be The One. In ¡°Digital Gold,¡± his book about bitcoin¡¯s origins, Nathaniel Popper quotes an email from Satoshi Nakamoto, the cryptocurrency¡¯s mysterious and possibly apocryphal inventor, ¡°I¡¯ve been working on a new electronic cash system that¡¯s fully peer-to-peer, with no trusted third party.¡±
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