{"id":8958,"date":"2018-06-27T09:00:21","date_gmt":"2018-06-27T13:00:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/michigan.it.umich.edu\/news\/?p=8958"},"modified":"2024-07-08T06:05:53","modified_gmt":"2024-07-08T10:05:53","slug":"whats-the-deal-with-bitcoin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/michigan.it.umich.edu\/news\/2018\/06\/27\/whats-the-deal-with-bitcoin\/","title":{"rendered":"What&#8217;s the deal with Bitcoin?"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_8963\" style=\"width: 610px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-8963\" class=\"size-full wp-image-8963\" src=\"https:\/\/michigan.it.umich.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/image.1530582114122.jpg\" alt=\"woman holding large gold coin, surrounded by merchandise\" width=\"600\" height=\"401\" srcset=\"https:\/\/michigan.it.umich.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/image.1530582114122.jpg 600w, https:\/\/michigan.it.umich.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/image.1530582114122-125x84.jpg 125w, https:\/\/michigan.it.umich.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/image.1530582114122-300x200.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-8963\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">(Julia Lubas, LSA)<\/p><\/div>\n<p>A Bitcoin boom could make millionaires, but a bust could just as easily destroy the cryptocurrency. So what exactly is Bitcoin and how does it work? LSA researcher <strong>Lynette Shaw<\/strong> <a href=\"https:\/\/lsa.umich.edu\/lsa\/news-events\/all-news\/search-news\/bitcoin-explained.html\">provides insights about new forms of digital currency<\/a>\u2014and what actually makes something worth anything.<\/p>\n<p>According to Shaw,\u00a0an assistant professor in the Center for the Study of Complex Systems, cryptocurrency like Bitcoin is &#8220;money without a state.&#8221; She says, &#8220;The original founding ideal of Bitcoin was to create an alternative form of money that didn&#8217;t require either the state, a central bank, or any trusted third-party actors to handle transactions.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Shaw compares the value of Bitcoin to a designer handbag. &#8220;You pay a lot for it not just because you will get some use out of the bag, but because you know that other people will pay a lot for it,&#8221; she explains. &#8220;I\u2019d argue that to succeed as money, cryptocurrency has to become like a U.S. dollar or designer handbag, where people take its worth for granted\u2014the point at which, collectively, we start to automatically treat its perceived value as reality.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A Bitcoin boom could make millionaires, but a bust could just as easily destroy the cryptocurrency. So what exactly is Bitcoin and how does it work? LSA researcher Lynette Shaw provides insights about new forms of digital currency\u2014and what actually makes something worth anything. According to Shaw,\u00a0an assistant professor in the Center for the Study of Complex Systems,\u2026 <span class=\"read-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/michigan.it.umich.edu\/news\/2018\/06\/27\/whats-the-deal-with-bitcoin\/\">Read More &raquo;<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8963,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","_umich_oidc_access":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[492,217],"class_list":["post-8958","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-campus-news","tag-cryptocurrency","tag-culture"],"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":["https:\/\/michigan.it.umich.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/image.1530582114122.jpg",600,401,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/michigan.it.umich.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/image.1530582114122-125x84.jpg",125,84,true],"medium":["https:\/\/michigan.it.umich.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/image.1530582114122-300x200.jpg",300,200,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/michigan.it.umich.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/image.1530582114122.jpg",600,401,false],"large":["https:\/\/michigan.it.umich.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/image.1530582114122.jpg",600,401,false],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/michigan.it.umich.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/image.1530582114122.jpg",600,401,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/michigan.it.umich.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/image.1530582114122.jpg",600,401,false],"excerpt-thumbnail":["https:\/\/michigan.it.umich.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/image.1530582114122-200x140.jpg",200,140,true],"themonic-thumbnail":["https:\/\/michigan.it.umich.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/image.1530582114122-60x42.jpg",60,42,true],"ioslider-thumbnail":["https:\/\/michigan.it.umich.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/image.1530582114122-600x300.jpg",600,300,true],"post-thumbnail":["https:\/\/michigan.it.umich.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/image.1530582114122.jpg",600,401,false],"400x250-crop":["https:\/\/michigan.it.umich.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/image.1530582114122.jpg",374,250,false]},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"News Staff","author_link":"https:\/\/michigan.it.umich.edu\/news\/author\/mitnewsadm\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"A Bitcoin boom could make millionaires, but a bust could just as easily destroy the cryptocurrency. So what exactly is Bitcoin and how does it work? LSA researcher Lynette Shaw provides insights about new forms of digital currency\u2014and what actually makes something worth anything. According to Shaw,\u00a0an assistant professor in the Center for the Study&hellip;","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/michigan.it.umich.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8958","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/michigan.it.umich.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/michigan.it.umich.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michigan.it.umich.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michigan.it.umich.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8958"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/michigan.it.umich.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8958\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8965,"href":"https:\/\/michigan.it.umich.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8958\/revisions\/8965"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michigan.it.umich.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8963"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/michigan.it.umich.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8958"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michigan.it.umich.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8958"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michigan.it.umich.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8958"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}