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"MUTUAL FUNDS|ESSAY
My Bitcoin Befuddlement
By JOHN SCHWARTZAPRIL 4, 2014
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Credit Glynis Sweeny
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AM I the only person in the world who doesn’t have Bitcoin jangling in a cryptographic wallet? Sometimes it seems that way.
This famous experiment in virtual cash, with its aura of near anonymity and lack of pesky regulation, gets tech heads really excited. Yet it may be the most famous thing in the world that nobody really understands.
People who hear about it have questions like “What is it?” and “Wait, I still don’t understand. What is it?” and “Why has the price fluctuated so wildly?” And, finally, “Are any of them, maybe, lodged between my sofa cushions?”
I can answer only the last question: No, unless you also have a virtual sofa.
I was born too late for the tulip bulbs and too early for Beanie Babies, but I don’t want to miss out on Bitcoin mania. Of course, I can’t become a Bitcoin mogul without knowing anything about it, so I did some research.
The first thing I found out? This is the closest thing in finance to riding an angry bull at the rodeo. The value of a single Bitcoin has gone as high as $1,200 and plummeted on bad news for the currency, like theft through hacking, to less than half of that. So caveat investor, says the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, or Finra. Those spoilsports put out an alert warning investors that it could be “more than a bit risky” to buy and sell Bitcoin because of all that volatility, and that there was a potential for fraud in dealing with some of the companies that say they are involved in the Bitcoin world. Bracing!
Wouldn’t you know it? The bureaucrats are circling" ...more
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