From Mr David Fullbrook.
Sir, Circumspection over the prospects for the Bitcoin, as for almost any innovation, is surely warranted. Certainly, crypto-currencies like their physical forebears are going to have their troubles. Yet for all the problems that have attended physical currency, not least the works of forgers hacking away, they have endured. In any case, most supposedly physical currency today is no such thing, being blinking numbers in the digital ether. In any case, what are central banks doing when they engage in quantitative easing other than hacking currency?
Conceivably, a crypto-currency generated as a function of an algorithm, perhaps in some way reflecting the pace of economic activity, might be more “neutral” than the algorithms running around the minds of politicians, central bankers and economists.
David Fullbrook, Hong Kong
