Skip to content
Subscriber Only
Opinion
Noah Smith

Bitcoin Looks More Like Gold Than a Currency

The cryptocurrency is volatile, costly to store, hard to use and deflationary.

These two things are not alike.

These two things are not alike.

Photographer: studioEAST/Getty Images AsiaPac
By

In the seven months since Bitcoin’s price peaked, it has fallen by about two-thirds. But it’s still almost three times more valuable than it was a year ago:

So what does the future hold for the world’s first and still most famous cryptocurrency? I see three basic scenarios: