We maintain that the crypto-currency bitcoin is a practical application of what is termed “memory” in the monetary economics literature. After reviewing the theoretical literature on money and memory, we offer a brief overview of the bitcoin protocol and argue that, like memory, bitcoin...

In just six years, bitcoin has gone from a relatively obscure piece of code to an internationally recognized form of payment. Yet, opinions about bitcoin’s future are mixed. After considering the major factors affecting bitcoin’s future use, I offer some modest predictions. In brief, I...

The recent proliferation of bitcoin has been a boon for users but might pose problems for governments. Indeed, some governments have already taken steps to ban or discourage the use of bitcoin. In a model with endogenous matching and random consumption preferences, we find multiple monetary...