Noah Smith, Columnist

Bitcoin Looks More Like Gold Than a Currency

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

July 11, 2018 at 11:00 AM UTC

Noah Smith is a former Bloomberg Opinion columnist. He was an assistant professor of finance at Stony Brook University, and he blogs at Noahpinion.

These two things are not alike.
Photographer: studioEAST/Getty Images AsiaPac

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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: