https://www.wired.com/2011/11/mf_bitcoin/
When Nakamoto’s paper came out in 2008, trust in the ability of governments and banks to manage the economy and the money supply was at its nadir. The US government was throwing dollars at Wall Street and the Detroit car companies. The Federal Reserve was introducing “quantitative easing,” essentially printing money in order to stimulate the economy. The price of gold was rising. Bitcoin required no faith in the politicians or financiers who had wrecked the economy—just in Nakamoto’s elegant algorithms. Not only did bitcoin’s public ledger seem to protect against fraud, but the predetermined release of the digital currency kept the bitcoin money supply growing at a predictable rate, immune to printing-press-happy central bankers and Weimar Republic-style hyperinflation.
“Bitcoin enthusiasts are almost evangelists,” Bruce Wagner says. “They see the beauty of the technology. It’s a huge movement. It’s almost like a religion. On the forum, you’ll see the spirit.
Beyond the most hardcore users, skepticism has only increased. Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman wrote that the
currency’s tendency to fluctuate has encouraged hoarding. Stefan Brands, a former ecash consultant and digital currency pioneer, calls bitcoin “clever” and is loath to bash it but believes it’s
fundamentally structured like “a pyramid scheme” that rewards early adopters. “I think the big problems are ultimately the trust issues,” he says. “There’s nothing there to back it up. I know the counterargument, that that’s true of fiat money, too, but that’s completely wrong. There’s a whole trust fabric that’s been established through legal mechanisms.”
