Bitcoin looks to have settled above $A60,000 for the moment — although there's now some selling — and as our technology correspondent Dan Van Boom reported, even the charred remnants of those burned by previous bonfires are being fanned.
What makes cryptocurrency addictive for the true believers is actually the volatility. It is no longer the promise of a financial revolution that will disintermediate the expensive and intrusive banking system.
Crypto is like the algorithm that drives pokies and delivers asymmetric rewards. Players might accept there is, say, a 5% house take but the random nature of the returns convinces them each play may be the winner. For the crypto believers, the ongoing absence of any fundamental value doesn’t undermine the belief that this next rally may be the payoff.
This is precisely why it fails one of the key determinants to make it a candidate for some kind of ubiquity in the real world financial system: it is a lottery.
