Vanity Fair

Ohmygoodness, you know that Bitcoin has gone mainstream when Vanity Fair does a piece on it. To be fair, they regularly cover technology at large, but now they've delved into the whole Bitcoin fray with a recent article describing why, in one reporter's opinion, the digital currency has exploded in valuation the way it has and the dire consequences thereof (hint: it's all Silicon Valley's fault). Of course the readers of FintekNews are well aware of the robust and diverse cryptocurrency movement underway, and we don't really agree with his personal assessment of the whole thing, but it's worth noting that the magazine has chosen to cover the category, regardless. We wonder where we'll see Bitcoin coverage showing up next - Good Housekeeping?

(Cindy Taylor/Publisher)

By Nick Bolton

- Should I buy bitcoin?

As a technology reporter, the questions I receive from random people at birthday parties, say, or seatmates on a plane, are usually emblematic of what is going on in the digital world. (And, increasingly, the real one, too, for that matter.) Not too long ago, the predominant question was

Should I buy the new iPhone?

Then it became

Do I need to be on Twitter?

or

Do I need to be on Facebook?

or

Do I need to be on Snapchat?

(That question has since come full circle to

Should I quit Twitter and Facebook?

) These days, the question I hear the most—well, besides whether Twitter should ban Trump—is

Should I buy bitcoin?

I usually respond with the story of Laszlo Hanyecz. If you’ve come within 500 feet of bitcoin, or any other cryptocurrency, over the past few years, the name alone will make you cringe. Back in 2010, when the currency was in its infancy, Hanyecz went “mining” for bitcoins for a few months and collected 10,000 of them; he subsequently traded them, in what would be the first cryptocurrency transaction in history, to a guy who bought him two Papa John’s pizzas with a couple sides of that tasty, buttery garlic sauce. Back then, Hanyecz’s bitcoins had no value, and the $30 value of two pies and an accoutrement made his individual bitcoin units worth 0.003 cents apiece. Today, at their current market valuation, bitcoin units are worth around $5,800 each, which means Hanyecz’s 10,000 bitcoins would be worth around $58 million. “It wasn’t like bitcoins had any value back then, so the idea of trading them for a pizza was incredibly cool,” Hanyecz told me in 2013, when bitcoin was already valued at $1,242 each. “No one knew it was going to get so big.”

For a lot of people on the periphery of this technology, the extraordinary rise in bitcoin’s value has become cause for alarm. The Web is littered with news articles, blog posts, and white papers warning that bitcoin and its sibling currencies are worth nothing, and the rise and fall of the currencies’ worth, which can fluctuate by billions of dollars a minute, certainly backs that up. But while Jamie Dimon and other bankers might scoff at these digital currencies, Silicon Valley is extremely bullish. There’s a reason, too: if Dimon had invested in bitcoin when he first called it a joke, in 2015, he would have received a tenfold return on his investment..."

Full Story at Vanity Fair