What’s The Point Of Bitcoin?
The Inquiry
BBC
4.6 • 1.7K Ratings
🗓️ 28 December 2017
⏱️ 23 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Making sense of the digital currency and the ideology of its founders, fans and future.
In 2010 a developer spent 10,000 bitcoin to buy two pizzas. Seven and a half years later that was the equivalent of over $80m.
Bitcoin has been exploding in value throughout 2017 as more and more people buy into the idea of a digital currency. Traditional financial institutions have even begun to get involved. But far from a mainstream investment, Bitcoin started life as an idea from the radical cypherpunk movement, who wanted to use decentralised technologies as a way to disrupt governments and corporations.
In this edition of The Inquiry we trace the history and development of Bitcoin – and ask whether its future will stay true to its libertarian roots.
(Image: The Digital Cryptocurrency Bitcoin. Photo Credit: Dan Kitwood/ Getty Images)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the Inquiry Podcast from the BBC World Service with me Simon Mabin. |
| 0:05.0 | Each week we bring you four expert witnesses answering one pressing question from the news. Saturday the 22nd of May 2010. Just another sunny day in Jacksonville, Florida USA. A pizza delivery man walks up the |
| 0:25.0 | front path of an unremarkable house and knocks on the door. The man who lives |
| 0:31.7 | there, a 28-year-old named Larsle Lohonnietz, is excited. |
| 0:36.0 | Yes, he likes pizza and he's expecting two of them, two large ones, |
| 0:41.0 | but there's something special about these pizzas, how he paid for them. |
| 0:46.0 | Larslo Honez had offered 10,000 bitcoins in exchange for two pizzas. |
| 0:59.0 | It was the first time anyone had ever bought anything with Bitcoin, the digital currency that exists only in computer code protected by a unique password. |
| 1:05.0 | Back then, 10,000 Bitcoin was worth around $40,000, |
| 1:10.0 | a generous reward for two pizzas. |
| 1:12.0 | Seven and a half years later in November |
| 1:15.0 | it was worth over $80 million. |
| 1:18.0 | And the dollar value of Bitcoin |
| 1:21.0 | has doubled again since then. The value's changing so |
| 1:26.8 | quickly it could have doubled again by the time you hear this or it could have dropped |
| 1:31.0 | sharply. Whatever happens there's no doubt that |
| 1:34.7 | Bitcoin has captured the world's attention. But when we already have old-fashioned |
| 1:40.3 | dollars, euros and pounds that seem to be working okay, we need to understand what |
| 1:45.6 | Bitcoin is actually for. |
| 1:50.8 | In this inquiry, we want to know, what's the point of Bitcoin. |
| 1:55.0 | Part 1, cipher punks. I live on a hilltop about five miles inland from the coast. I'm surrounded by |
| 2:09.3 | redwood trees, pine trees. Tim May lives in the hills that peered down on California's Silicon Valley. |
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