The Business Times
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THINKING ALOUD

Bitcoin is in its post-usefulness phase, and that’s OK

Crypto has been co-opted by speculators, and the sooner we accept this, the better

    • As Bitcoin sceptics and Bitcoin maximalists talk over each other, a third group – the opportunists – have bought and sold the stuff many times over.
    • As Bitcoin sceptics and Bitcoin maximalists talk over each other, a third group – the opportunists – have bought and sold the stuff many times over. PHOTO: EPA-EFE
    Joyce Hooi

    Joyce Hooi

    Published Tue, Dec 10, 2024 · 05:00 AM

    BACK in 2013 as a reporter for The Business Times, I had the privilege of front-row seats to the early cryptocurrency gold rush in Singapore. It was a heady time. Early adopters honed in on Bitcoin, guided by an ineffable conviction that they were on to something big.

    Then, even pioneers of the local crypto scene had struggled to articulate what exactly Satoshi Nakamoto’s creation was supposed to be. “It’s just something,” one of them had told me. “It’s not really a currency. It’s just something,” he added.

    He hadn’t arrived at this pronouncement through lack of contemplation, but rather through an abundance of it. Think about Bitcoin hard enough, and you end up in a currency-versus-commodity mental ouroboros so perplexing that you need to go lie down.

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