This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Monday, November 20th, 2017. I'm Caleb Brown.

Bitcoons, big ups and downs and ups have drawn new interest. China has prohibited exchanges that handle

Bitcoin. Other countries have found it to be perfectly fine. Will Luther is an assistant professor

of economics at Kenyan college. we discussed the new attempts to

restrict Bitcoin at the Cato Institute's monetary conference last week.

Bitcoin has hit several highs recently and some of that was driven by how various

countries decided to treat it. There is this huge push in Venezuela for people to adopt it in light of the inflation rate in Venezuela.

There was a hard fork that was of a split essentially in Bitcoin that did not occur and may not occur.

So is that all that's driving the price or is there something else?

Well, you're right, the last few months have been pretty turbulent for Bitcoin,

both with the forks and with the announcement last month that Bitcoin exchanges would no longer be permitted in China.

So it's been pretty turbulent.

I think that what you have to keep in mind is that anything that happens to the Bitcoin

network gets amplified because Bitcoin is a money

and monies are subject to network effects and so you're not just concerned

with how this affects your decision to use this item as a medium of exchange,

but also how you expect that it will affect others' desire to use this as a medium of exchange.

And of course, they're thinking about what you're thinking and you're thinking. desire to use this as a medium of exchange.

And of course, they're thinking about what you're thinking and you're thinking about what they're thinking.

And it just, it's turtles all the way down, right?

So I think that any shock that happens just gets amplified.

All right, so there are some efforts.

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