Can Bitcoin make change?

Kai Ryssdal Dec 18, 2013
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Can Bitcoin make change?

Kai Ryssdal Dec 18, 2013
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If you’re riding the rollercoaster that is Bitcoin, you may be getting used to the pain of tearing your hair out over it’s plummets and surges. And over the past few weeks those ebs and flows have been strongly tied to China. The Chinese government just announced that Chinese Bitcoin exchanges are now banned from using the Yuan. Our own Ben Johnson over at the Marketplace Tech Report has been running a whole series on Bitcoin this week. He says despite its rocky start, Bitcoin just may be the future of commerce as we know it.

“This could be a way we all transfer money and spend money both online and in the real world in the future. I talked to a doctor who takes patients who pay him in Bitcoin. People are using Bitcoin at the farmers market on their cell phones. There’s actually a Silicon Valley start-up called CoinBase that’s trying to become the PayPal of Bitcoin. So, I think there is a lot of potential here, but the question is will it be regulated? Will it be more stabalized by governments and banks? And in some ways we’re going to lose some of the things people love about it if that happens, which is no service charges, no taxes, difficutlt to trace, things like that.”

To learn more about Bitcoin and its future, listen to the whole interview and check out the Marketplace Tech Bitcoin series

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