{"id":208,"date":"2014-03-12T17:50:09","date_gmt":"2014-03-12T17:50:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/trot\/?p=208"},"modified":"2015-10-13T19:08:26","modified_gmt":"2015-10-13T19:08:26","slug":"is-bitcoin-a-bust","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/trot\/2014\/03\/12\/is-bitcoin-a-bust\/","title":{"rendered":"Is Bitcoin a Bust?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p dir=\"ltr\">The <a href=\"http:\/\/america.aljazeera.com\/articles\/2014\/2\/25\/major-bitcoin-exchangemtgoxpresumeddead.html\">recent collapse of Mt. Gox<\/a>\u2014a prominent exchange site for the internet currency <a href=\"https:\/\/bitcoin.org\/en\/\">Bitcoin<\/a>\u2014has sparked wide discussion about the future of \u201cvirtual\u201d money and the social groups that create it. Some remain cautiously optimistic (though <a href=\"http:\/\/www.pastemagazine.com\/articles\/2014\/02\/paste-goes-to-the-worlds-first-dogecoin-meetup.html\">pointing out<\/a> that Bitcoin may take itself a little too seriously), while others have said the currency <a href=\"http:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/roubini-bitcoin-is-a-ponzi-scheme-and-a-conduit-for-criminal-activities-2014-3\">amounts to a \u201cPonzi scheme\u201d<\/a> with \u201cno store of value.\u201d As a <a href=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/2013\/11\/22\/the-myth-of-virtual-currency\/\">post from our friends at Cyborgology<\/a> noted last year,<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Calling Bitcoins \u201cvirtual currency\u201d is nonsensical because all currencies are virtual in that they are \u201ccollective hallucinations\u201d about measurement of worth.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<h5>Classic sociological theory investigated how society creates value, and came to similar conclusions. Gold and paper money needed a lot of collective social support to become valuable.<\/h5>\n<ul>\n<li>Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. 1867. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.marxists.org\/archive\/marx\/works\/1867-c1\/\">Capital. A Critique of Political Economy Volume One<\/a> London: Penguin, 1990.<\/li>\n<li>Georg Simmel. 1900. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/The-Philosophy-Money-Routledge-Classics\/dp\/0415610117\">The Philosophy of Money<\/a>. New York: Routledge, 2011.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h5>What makes one currency more \u201cvaluable\u201d than another is institutional support, but this wasn\u2019t always guaranteed for the U.S. dollar, either.<\/h5>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.sociology.northwestern.edu\/people\/faculty\/bruce-carruthers.html\">Bruce G. Carruthers<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bc.edu\/schools\/cas\/sociology\/faculty\/profiles\/sarah-babb.html\">Sarah Babb<\/a>. 1996. \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.jstor.org.ezp3.lib.umn.edu\/stable\/2782112\">The Color of Money and the Nature of Value: Greenbacks and Gold in Postbellum America.<\/a>\u201d American Journal of Sociology 101(6): 1556\u201391.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><script src=\"\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/js\/adsbygoogle.js\" async=\"\"><\/script><!-- TSP testing --> <ins class=\"adsbygoogle\" style=\"display: inline-block; width: 234px; height: 60px;\" data-ad-client=\"ca-pub-4670099812817063\" data-ad-slot=\"1069646635\"><\/ins><script>\/\/ <![CDATA[\n(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});\n\/\/ ]]><\/script><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-2638\" src=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/editors\/files\/2014\/03\/Picture-2-330x38.png\" alt=\"Picture 2\" width=\"330\" height=\"38\" \/><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The recent collapse of Mt. Gox\u2014a prominent exchange site for the internet currency Bitcoin\u2014has sparked wide discussion about the future of \u201cvirtual\u201d money and the social groups that create it. Some remain cautiously optimistic (though pointing out that Bitcoin may take itself a little too seriously), while others have said the currency amounts to a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1893,"featured_media":531,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[38543,131,140,129,12],"class_list":["post-208","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-culture","tag-culture","tag-economy","tag-internet","tag-media","tag-technology"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/trot\/files\/2014\/03\/10307504544_1e7e10202b_z.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/trot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/trot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/trot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/trot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1893"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/trot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=208"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/trot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":532,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/trot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208\/revisions\/532"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/trot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/531"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/trot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=208"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/trot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=208"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/trot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=208"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}