New Times,
New Thinking.

  1. Business
  2. Economics
19 March 2013updated 27 Sep 2015 6:00am

The Economist agrees: Bitcoin is looking a tad bubbly

pop

By Alex Hern

The Economist’s Graphic Detail blog touches on the bitcoin boom (which we covered yesterday and last Friday), and it sees something distinctively bubbly about the whole thing:

Online interest in the currency has spiked in recent months. Though an increasing number of legitimate businesses are adopting the currency—one Finnish software developer has offered to pay its employees in Bitcoin—it still has relatively few users. Its primary commercial use is probably to buy drugs from Silk Road, a sort of pirate eBay hidden in the “deep web”. This suggests that the new users are buying Bitcoin as an investment, not as a means of exchange. For any currency to thrive it needs users, not just speculators.

The whole thing comes to a head in one killer chart, but you’ll have to click through for that.

Content from our partners
The future of exams
Skills are the key to economic growth
Skills Transition is investing in UK skills and jobs

Subscribe to The New Statesman today for only £1 per week