A lot of respected people, for example Doug Casey, used to say that cryptocurrencies are "backed by nothing” and therefore somehow inferior to the “full faith and credit of the US government”.

So was the Mises Institute a/o 2011, when I first heard of Bitcoin (through one of their blog posts.) I have to say, the Bitcoin evangelists in the comments section did hold their own: so much so that I almost signed up for Bitcointalk back then so as to write a post on why Bitcoin did satisfy Mises' regression theorem. In part, because the "only gold is money" crowd struck me as peremptory.

I didn't sign up then because I choked: after looking around about hackings, I saw "keystroke logging malware" and went into nerd fright. That fright combined with writer's ego caused me to choke.

Bitcoin, and of course Bitshares, are a real treasure for economics in that they're living case studies about how speculation can create real value down the road. I'm painfully aware of how much of an outlier this is. But Bitcoin, and of course, Bitshares, managed to attract a whole crop of doers who had great ideas but lacked the capital to implement those ideas. The rocket-up of crypto gave them the capital, or at least the confidence, to go ahead with the implementation.

Here's a quick hypothetical example: imagine an alternate me who was not frightened off in 2011. "I" bought 1,000 Bitcoins in '11 and held onto them until Bitcoin broke $1,000 at the end of '13. At that point, I feel a tug of obligation because I essentially rode my way up to affluence.

So, I buy a well-trafficked store, equip it to accept cryptocurrencies in payment, stuff crypto brochures in the bags of every customer, and put a big sign on the front window saying "Bitcoin Accepted Here!" Even if the Bitcoin trade proves to be minimal, I'd still be evangelizing for Bitcoin as a straight currency.

Bitshares went through a similar growth. Its speculative value has attracted real businesses.

It's almost magical. As an important bonus, the ideology of decentralization has gotten a huge push because of crypto's huge collective market cap.