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Tyler Cowen

Bitcoin Is (Probably) Here to Stay

The resilience of cryptocurrency has a lot to do with the volatility of the real world.

What goes down must come up, and vice versa, usually. — What goes down must come up, and vice versa, usually.
Photographer: Jaap Arriens/NurPhoto via Getty /NurPhoto

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June 28, 2019, 10:00 AM UTC

In case you hadn’t noticed, Bitcoin has made a major comeback. After falling below $4,000 for much of 2018, the price reached almost $14,000 earlier this week. It’s still volatile, and fell sharply later in the week, but some Bitcoin optimists believe it will soon approach its late-2017 high of $20,000.

The obvious question is this: If Bitcoin was just a bubble to begin with, why has it been bouncing back in this manner? The answer is that cryptocurrencies, in some form or another, are probably here to stay.