I may have to revise my view that crypto-currencies are Satan’s work

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.