As the show continues to examine hacking culture, the future of money has become an issue, too
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*Highlight to read* For most of its two seasons, “Mr. Robot” has revolved around a plot to hack and destroy the global conglomerate E Corp. In last night’s episode, though, the plot flipped into a fight over currencies and power and a battle between bitcoin and a government-controlled alternative.
The scheme was dreamed up by Phillip Price (Michael Cristofer), the malignant E Corp. CEO, to turn his company’s digital currency, eCoin, into the equivalent of the U.S. dollar, as a way to fight bitcoin. What’s absolutely great about this is that it plays on not one, but two dystopian fears: the fears among corporatists and government officials that bitcoin is going to take over the world, and the fear among bitcoiners that their beloved cryptocurrency will be perverted into a tool of the very institutions they sought to disintermediate in the first place.
http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2016/09/15/mr-robot-drags-bitcoin-into-its-dystopian-nightmare/