I confess to being an out-and-out Luddite when it comes to bitcoin and other so-called crypto-currencies. To the extent that I think about them at all, I think that they are an ephemeral by-product of those creepy ‘virtual worlds’ in which obsessed gamers eventually go mad; that only such lost souls could seriously believe unregulated online money might eventually supplant the state-backed real thing; and that fashionable belief in them can only lead to fraud and loss. In short, I concluded some time ago, they are probably the work of Satan.
‘Every normal person above the age of six and not over-affected by chemical stimulants should [grasp] that societal concepts such as “money” and “law” are not identical to the tokens and rules that hold sway in games,’ I ranted in a review of Wildcat Currency by Edward Castronova, an ‘expert on the societies of virtual worlds’ at Indiana University whose wacky ramblings re-inforced my hostility. Encounters in London with the clearly benign and well-intentioned Stan Stalnaker, whose Hub Culture social network runs its own currency called the Ven (‘Every time you use it, you’re helping the planet’), did not change my mind.
So I’m perturbed to learn that the ‘blockchain’, the key software behind bitcoin and its ilk, is being investigated by major banks and consultancy firms as a potentially revolutionary mechanism for all our transactions. Using a database shared by a network of computers without a central authority, this could — the FT says — improve security for end-users while slashing costs across the financial sector by $20 billion a year. Even the Bank of England is said to be thinking positively about it. As with so many other changes in modern life and mores, I may one day have to set my prejudices aside.
Even less dull
‘If a bank looks dull, it probably isn’t’ is a maxim I applied some time ago both to the Co-operative Bank, with its broken balance sheet and naughty-vicar chairman, and Standard Chartered — which until 2012 was regarded as the steadiest of overseas commercial banks, rooted in its traditional Asian markets, resistant to takeover, and led by a sensible chief executive, Peter Sands, whose star rose as others fell during the financial crisis.
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