Bitcoin: it wasn’t meant to be like this…

As the price of bitcoin reaches new records amid an unprecedented upward spiral, staging a spectacular rally that some pundits suggest could see its value double, there is a growing feeling of disappointment and a strong sense that this wasn’t the idea. Bitcoin was created precisely to replace a financial system responsible for many problems and cyclical crises, to generate a better, fairer and less speculative arrangement, but instead has simply replicated it on an even greater scale.

We now have a situation whereby around a thousand people, the so-called bitcoin whales, own around 40% of all money in circulation in the world: incalculable fortunes in the hands not of people talented enough to create value, but who were in the right place at the right time, were prepared to take big risks, or simply had access to better information. What’s the point of a new currency if it simply benefits those with huge amounts of money in the first place who are willing to speculate?

If, a few years ago you had the bright idea of trying out a promising new technology and you have not forgotten your access data, it is possible that now, overnight, you are virtually a millionaire… why? Have you really done anything to deserve a standard of living far above the rest of society?

The founder of Coinbase, which has become the most popular app in the United States in terms of downloads, has told his user base to use common sense and to think twice about buying something they’ve been told is worth a lot of money, even though they don’t really understand why. Meanwhile, we’ve seen robberies of obscene amounts of money go unpunished thanks to a total absence of regulation, dangerous volatility and abusive commissions of more than twenty dollars per transaction, along with a completely inefficient operating scheme that could ruin strategies designed for clean and sustainable energies.

This is turning into the mother of all bubbles, and one that some are justifying by saying that the dotcom bubble bequeathed us the Internet we know today. Well, they’re wrong. The internet bubble was created by a bunch of people of all kinds who suddenly saw an environment where they could do things they couldn’t in the traditional marketplace, and in which anyone with a good idea and the ability to develop it could reasonably access funds from a community of investors who were willing to finance it. A more accurate equivalent of the new bitcoin millionaires are not the dotcom entrepreneurs who started companies, but the smart asses who, without adding any value, simply bought up domain names and then tried to sell them to real entrepreneurs at abusive prices.

Blockchain is an interesting idea, backed by an elegant, efficient design, and that could solve some of the most obvious problems afflicting financial transactions. But it is quite possible that the value proposition designed by Satoshi Nakamoto, whoever that may have been, has been exchanged in favor of a scheme that favors a few wealthy people. If this is all bitcoin is going to amount to, then I imagine that its creator or creators, turned into sad imitators of the sorcerer’s apprentice, will have little to be proud of.

(En espa?ol, aquí)