Bitcoin Forum

It may be a coincidence, but this week’s plunge coincided with growing publicity for a currency that sounds a little like gold, at least if you are not paying close attention. That is the digital currency called bitcoin, which has of late been more volatile than a dot-com stock in 1999. Invented in 2009, its supply supposedly is controlled by a rigid computer program, making it, like gold, not subject to central bank manipulation. It got an endorsement last week from The Economist magazine: “Regulators should keep their hands off new forms of digital money such as bitcoin,” the magazine wrote, proclaiming that the bitcoin’s “unique digital signature” makes it “impossible to forge.”

To gold advocates, that kind of talk is dangerous.

“The bitcoin is not the answer to the Federal Reserve’s depredations against the dollar,” wrote Steve Forbes, a former presidential hopeful, in his blog at Forbes.com. “The basic reason: It has no fixed value. It trades like a stock or commodity. In recent days it has been crashing after a spectacular rise in terms of dollars. Such volatility makes it useless as a means to do transactions.”

Of course, you could say something similar about gold.

its supply supposedly is controlled by a rigid computer program

"supposedly"

lol