Is Your Online Poker Game Rigged? How Provably Fair Shuffling on Race Protocol Works

Detail: https://coincu.com/news/zhao-dong-reportedly-released-impact/

The post Massive Software Supply-Chain Hack Targeting Crypto Ends with Pennies Stolen appeared on BitcoinEthereumNews.com. One web developer’s compromised npm account triggered a large-scale supply chain attack, but the hacker only got a few cents in crypto, analysts say. An unknown hacker pulled off what may be the largest software supply-chain attack ever, but still made less than the price of many memecoins. On Monday, Sept. 8, a hacker broke into the account of a well-known JavaScript developer known as “qix” and pushed malicious updates to dozens of widely used software tools for building websites and apps, which together are downloaded more than two billion times each week. After gaining access, the hacker added malicious code to all of the developer’s packages, which wasn’t a virus in the traditional sense but was still designed to steal cryptocurrency from users’ crypto wallets in browsers. The attack immediately caused chaos as developer updates are usually automatically trusted, so when new versions come in, many projects and apps accept them without checking, letting the hacker’s code spread fast. Snir Levi, founder and CEO of compliance and threat management platform Nominis, told The Defiant that the modern software supply chain is “incredibly interconnected,” as a single compromised npm account can cascade across thousands of projects and businesses in minutes, because code reuse is the “backbone of the entire ecosystem.” Npm is a registry for JavaScript software packages. “The stakes aren’t just technical – a malicious package in a critical dependency can impact millions of users, move billions of dollars, and undermine trust in the integrity of the industry. This incident highlights that security isn’t just about protecting infrastructure; it’s about protecting every link in a vast, invisible web of trust,” Levi explained. The malicious code, mainly targeting Ethereum and Solana transactions, was created to swap destination addresses to the hacker’s wallet, the Security Alliance wrote in a post-attack blog…

Will Bitcoin Be Worth Zero in Ten Years — or Not? A matrix analysis, outside the box In August 2025, Bitcoin once again broke records, trading above $124,000 before easing back. Each new rally invites a new round of warnings. This time it was Eugene F. Fama, Nobel laureate and one of the most respected economists alive, who declared that the probability of Bitcoin becoming worthless within a decade was “close to one.” As someone who believes in Bitcoin’s promise, I found myself wondering: is there any way to answer this and other such formidable predictions? I cannot refute Fama or his peers on their own ground — after all, I am no economist. But as a philosopher (at least my diploma says so), I can attempt a different angle. Let us call it a “what if” approach. Socrates loved to probe the solid concepts of his time by asking what if. It is a method that does not deny the brilliance of its targets; it simply asks whether they might be looking from the wrong vantage point. So, our first and main ‘what-if’ is this: what if economics itself does not see the broader picture? Not these Nobel-winning individuals, whom I will cite with the utmost respect, but the discipline as it defines its own rules.Source: © 2025 Digital & Analogue Partners What if economics does not see a critical angle? Economics and philosophy have always looked at value from different vantage points. The very word economy comes from the Greek oikonomia — the management of the household. It implies boundaries: walls, rooms, ledgers. Philosophy, by contrast — literally the love of wisdom — has always stood outside the house. It is less concerned with balancing today’s accounts than with asking what the household is for, whether the rules inside still fit the age, and what unseen assumptions lie beneath them. Plato would say philosophy looks outwards to the world of ideas, and then back in through the window. So when Nobel economists declare that Bitcoin will fail, they speak from within the house: they measure stability, productivity, regulation, and social use. These are not illegitimate standards. But it is not the only vantage. We can, with respect, step outside the walls and ask: what if value itself has shifted? To do that, we need discipline. I propose to take the objections of Fama and other Nobel voices — Krugman, Stiglitz, Shiller — and arrange them into a simple matrix. It turns out they all bring up the same six arguments against Bitcoin. Let us call the matrix of scepticism. Then we will walk this matrix not only through Bitcoin, but through gold — the historic store of value that endured centuries of the same accusations. This is our method: ordered analysis inside, imaginative “what ifs” outside. Together, they might show us whether Bitcoin is merely a bubble — or the mirror of a civilisation already organised around data.Eugene F. Fama Fama’s Challenge When the Capitalisn’t podcast aired at the end of January 2025, the clip of Eugene F. Fama was instantly circulated: “What is the probability that Bitcoin’s value will go to zero within the next ten years?” His reply: “I would say it’s close to one.” He explained why: Bitcoin fails the most basic test of money — it does not provide a stable real value. This was not just another economist taking a swing at Bitcoin. Fama’s name carries unusual weight. A professor at the University of Chicago, he is widely known as the “father of modern finance.” His early work established the Efficient Market Hypothesis, reshaping how the world thought about stock prices. In 2013, he received the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences, shared with Robert Shiller and Lars Peter Hansen. That is why his prediction is jarring. He spoke just as Bitcoin was climbing to its highest level in history — above $124,000 — a moment when many believers were celebrating. Fama’s reasoning is consistent. If something cannot fulfil the functions of money — medium of exchange, unit of account, store of value — then in the long run it fails. However, what if the very functions of money are shifting? A Chorus of Doubt Fama is not a lone sceptic. For more than a decade, Nobel Prize–winning economists have been raising their own red flags about Bitcoin.Paul Krugman Paul Krugman (Nobel 2008) has been one of the most persistent. Writing in the New York Times, he once titled a column bluntly: “Bitcoin is Evil.” His objection was not moral panic but economic principle: Bitcoin is, in his words, “economically useless.” It generates no income, settles transactions more slowly than existing systems, and consumes enormous energy.Joseph Stiglitz Joseph Stiglitz (Nobel 2001) sharpened the point in a 2017 interview. Bitcoin, he said, “ought to be outlawed.” His argument was that its main use was to evade regulation — to launder money, to finance illicit trade, to operate outside the rules that households of nations require for order.Robert Shiller Robert Shiller (Nobel 2013), a scholar of bubbles, framed Bitcoin differently. He has spent his career showing how markets are often driven less by rational calculation than by narratives — stories that spread like epidemics. In his eyes, Bitcoin is exactly that: a speculative bubble powered by contagious stories. Why dwell on these three? Because together with Fama, they map the interior of the economic household. Krugman questions utility, Stiglitz questions legitimacy, Shiller questions psychology, and Fama questions monetary function. Four Nobel laureates, four angles, one verdict: Bitcoin has no long future. Why the Matrix of Scepticism? Why a matrix? Because without structure, scepticism feels like smoke. By setting arguments side by side, we can see the shape of the house. Our task is to take this matrix seriously. But instead of testing it only against Bitcoin, we will first turn it against gold. For centuries, gold was money. Today, it is an asset. Along the way, it endured every one of these six charges. Seeing how it did so will tell us more about Bitcoin than a price chart ever could. Fiat or Gold: the Right Comparator At first glance, it seems obvious to compare Bitcoin to the dollar or the euro. If it claims to be money, shouldn’t we judge it against the currencies we actually use? But that comparison misleads. Dollars and euros are not just money — they are money backed by the full faith of states, by armies, tax systems, and central banks. Their value is secured not only by markets but by law. Bitcoin has no such sovereign foundation. To see its true likeness, we need to recall how even the dollar once leaned on something else. Under the Bretton Woods system (1944), the U.S. promised foreign central banks that their dollars could be redeemed for gold at $35 an ounce. In effect, the dollar was not free-standing; it was a claim on metal. That tether snapped in August 1971, when President Richard Nixon suspended convertibility. By the Jamaica Agreement of 1976, the world had accepted floating exchange rates and formally stripped gold of its role as money. Gold did not vanish, but its character changed: no longer a medium of exchange, it survived as an asset of belief. This is the hinge for our analysis. Bitcoin today is not money in the sense that dollars are — it does not pay taxes, salaries, or supermarket bills. But like gold after 1976, it is pursued and priced as a store of value resting on scarcity and symbolism. It is not a rival to fiat; it is a rival to bullion. That is why our comparison will be to gold, not dollars. If gold could survive centuries of scepticism and still hold its place in vaults and portfolios, then Bitcoin deserves to be tested by the same standard.Source: © 2025 Digital & Analogue Partners Matrix of Scepticism 1 No Intrinsic Value The first objection in our Matrix of Scepticism is the simplest to state: Bitcoin has no intrinsic value. Unlike a share of stock, it pays no dividend. Unlike a bond, it pays no interest. Unlike land, it yields no crops. What it offers is only the possibility that someone else will accept it later. Paul Krugman sharpened this into a familiar insult: Bitcoin is “a Ponzi,” sustained not by productivity but by resale. This sounds devastating — until we notice how often the same criticism was once aimed at gold. Keynes and the “barbarous relic” In 1924, in A Tract on Monetary Reform, John Maynard Keynes called the gold standard a “barbarous relic.” He did not mean gold was useless as a metal. He meant it was useless as the foundation of money in a modern economy. A system tied to the accidents of geology — new mines in South Africa, discoveries in Alaska — could not provide enough liquidity in a crisis. To Keynes, clinging to gold was not rational discipline but superstition, a refusal to adapt. Gold was barren: it generated no income, yet it held nations hostage. Adam Smith and the wheel of circulation A century and a half earlier, Adam Smith had already seen the paradox. In The Wealth of Nations (1776), he described gold and silver as “the great wheel of circulation.” Money, yes, but unlike a plough or a workshop, they were sterile. Their value was not in production but in convention. They were accepted because everyone agreed to accept them. In modern terms, Smith saw precious metals as a social contract: inert in themselves, alive only in human belief. Belief as the true engine of value This is the crucial echo. If the absence of yield disqualifies Bitcoin, then gold should have been disqualified long ago. It endures not because it is “productive” but because people believe it secures value across time. Even its few industrial uses account for only a fraction of its price. Its real worth lies in the story: permanence, incorruptibility, rarity. Bitcoin, of course, has no gleam, no jewellery, no circuitry. It lives only in code. Yet here, too, belief is the engine. Its blockchain — the incorruptible record beneath it — represents scarcity in the digital world, just as gold once represented scarcity in the physical. If gold was the guarantor of weight and solidity, Bitcoin aspires to be the guarantor of cryptographic trust. The economists might be right: Bitcoin yields nothing. But stepping outside of the economic scope, we see that value itself has never depended only on yield. It has depended on what a civilisation chooses to revere. For centuries, that was metal, dug at terrible cost. Today, in a civilisation built on data, it may be code. The important thing is not the object itself but the belief that the object crystallises. Humans have always lived by such crystallisations, and they are rarely “intrinsic.”Source: © 2025 Digital & Analogue Partners 2 Extreme Volatility The second objection is about stability. A currency, say the sceptics, must be predictable; a store of value must not double one month and halve the next. Bitcoin’s history of booms and crashes — $20,000 in 2017, down to $3,000 the year after; $69,000 in 2021, then collapsing, then soaring past $124,000 in 2025 — seems to prove the point. Nobel laureate Robert Shiller calls it the very picture of a speculative bubble: prices driven not by fundamentals but by contagious stories. But again, this is not new. Gold, which we now treat as the symbol of permanence, has itself been the epicentre of violent swings. The flood of silver and the Price Revolution In the sixteenth century, Spain’s conquest of the Americas unleashed a torrent of bullion into Europe. From the mines of Potosí in Bolivia and Zacatecas in Mexico, Spanish galleons carried back staggering quantities of silver and gold. Economic historians estimate that between 1500 and 1650, Spain imported over 180 tons of gold and 16,000 tons of silver. The effect was dramatic: prices across Europe tripled or quadrupled in a century, in what scholars call the Price Revolution. What does this mean in modern terms? Imagine a saver in Antwerp or Florence holding coins whose purchasing power eroded year after year, not because of mismanagement but because geology and empire had changed the money supply overnight. Gold and silver, supposedly the anchors of value, had become the vectors of instability. The Cross of Gold Fast forward three centuries to the United States. In 1896, at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, William Jennings Bryan gave his famous “Cross of Gold” speech. He thundered that America must not be crucified upon the rigid deflation of a strict gold standard: “You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns, You shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold.” Bryan’s metaphor captured a reality: when tied to gold alone, the U.S. money supply contracted; farmers and workers faced falling prices and crushing debts. Gold was not a shield against volatility but the very source of economic pain. The great gold bubble of the 1970s Even in living memory, gold has shown its instability. After President Richard Nixon closed the “gold window” in 1971, ending the dollar’s convertibility, the metal was freed to trade openly. The decade was marked by oil shocks, political turmoil, and inflation that reached double digits. Gold became the escape valve. Its price climbed from $35 an ounce in 1971 to $850 in January 1980 — a twenty-fourfold increase. Then, under Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker, interest rates were raised to nearly 20 percent to crush inflation. Gold collapsed, losing half its value in a year, and languished for decades. For a family who had piled into gold in 1979, convinced it was the only safe haven, the crash was ruinous. The pattern is painfully familiar to anyone who bought Bitcoin at its 2021 peak. Volatility is not a Bitcoin anomaly. It is what happens when an asset derives its value from collective belief rather than from a predictable cash flow. Gold has been volatile whenever new discoveries, rigid standards, or inflationary panics pulled at its story. Bitcoin is volatile for the same reason: because it is young, belief is still being tested. The household of economics is right that such turbulence disqualifies Bitcoin as a unit of account. But outside the house, looking across history, volatility is not the end of the story. It is often the way a new asset fights for legitimacy. Gold survived its storms to become the archetype of permanence. Whether Bitcoin will do the same is not yet known. But the charge of volatility alone is no prophecy of death. Fantastic additions! Here’s the refined 5.3 Inefficiency section — now including the modern ESG perspective and the Ethereum proof-of-stake comparison — seamlessly woven in the essay’s narrative style.Source: © 2025 Digital & Analogue Partners 3 Inefficiency The third sceptical charge digits down to one word: waste. Bitcoin’s proof-of-work consensus is infamous for its voracious energy appetite — terawatt-hours annually, comparable to mid-sized nations. Settlement is slow; fees spike at exactly the wrong moment. Nobel economist Joseph Stiglitz once told Bloomberg: “Bitcoin ought to be outlawed,” arguing its social value is swamped by its environmental toll. It’s an easy argument to sympathise with — especially today, as we face climate crises and demand ESG accountability. And yet, if we judge Bitcoin by advocating efficiency alone, we’d have to throw gold in the bin, too. The mountain that eats men Consider the silver-gold mountain of Potosí. Discovered in 1545 in present-day Bolivia, it became one of history’s greatest mines. Indigenous workers were forced into the mita system; thousands perished underground. From the 1570s, toxic mercury amalgamation accelerated extraction and poisoning. Chroniclers grimly noted that “every peso coined at Potosí cost the life of ten Indians.” Ruinous in human and environmental terms — and yet, central to European wealth for centuries. The Roman ravines Over in Spain, the Romans once destroyed entire hillsides at Las Médulas, using ruina montium — flooding tunnels so the mountains collapsed. The scarred landscape remains a UNESCO World Heritage site: majestic in history, tragic in its logic. Transport and custody Even after mining, gold remained inefficient to move. Spanish treasure fleets were eternal magnets for pirates — and storms. In 1628, Dutch admiral Piet Heyn seized an entire silver convoy. In 1715, a hurricane sank eleven galleons off Florida, their cargo still undiscovered. Centuries later, inefficiency took another form: Fort Knox, built in 1936, a fortress costing millions to secure what had already been mined. You might argue: This was history. Today, we care about nature. Fair enough — but Bitcoin mining can be more aligned with sustainability than many critics admit. A 2025 Cambridge report shows that 52.4% of Bitcoin mining now utilises sustainable energy sources (wind, hydro, and nuclear), up from 37.6% in 2022. (CoinNews) Miners in Texas and Iceland, for example, balance renewable grid volatility, acting as a flexible sink for excess power, boosting renewable investment and grid stability. (Crypto Council for Innovation) Some facilities, such as one in Finland, utilise 100% renewable energy and recycle waste heat to warm entire cities, transforming mining into an environmentally sustainable infrastructure. (Bitkern Group AG) Bitcoin mining, when responsibly harnessed, can become a tool — not a cost — for sustainability. Meanwhile, Ethereum, the second-largest crypto, has transitioned to proof-of-stake, cutting energy usage by over 99%. That leap gives the lie to the notion that blockchain must consume vast power — that hint of a greener future is already here. (Walletinvestor.com, S&P Global) If inefficiency alone disqualified an asset, gold — routes ravaged, ships sunk, lives lost — should have vanished centuries ago. Yet it endured because inefficiency can become proof of scarcity and incorruptibility. Bitcoin shares that paradox. Its energy-intensive logic is a costly signal guaranteeing decentralised security. Like gold, it does not replicate value — it originates it. Looking at civilisations through history and value, inefficiency is often the price we gratefully pay for trust, and clean energy adaptation suggests even that price can be repurposed for good.Source: © 2025 Digital & Analogue Partners 4 Speculative Bubble My favourite charge is that Bitcoin is nothing but a bubble: prices soar on waves of hype, then collapse when the crowd loses faith. Nobel laureate Robert Shiller, whose work on speculative manias won him the prize, sees Bitcoin as the perfect case of “narrative economics.” The price, he argues, is propelled less by rational calculation than by contagious stories of easy fortune. Once again, gold has been here before. California, 1849 In January 1848, a carpenter named James Marshall found flakes of gold in the American River in California. Within months, news raced across oceans. By 1849, ships from China, Australia, and Europe were disgorging prospectors on the Pacific coast. San Francisco exploded from a sleepy village of a few hundred into a city of 25,000. But the dream was cruel. Few struck it rich. Most found nothing but exhaustion, disease, and debt. The real fortunes were made not by miners but by merchants: Levi Strauss, who sold sturdy trousers; Samuel Brannan, who sold shovels and pans at a premium. The pattern was classic: a story of boundless wealth, a migration of believers, riches for a handful, ruin for the majority. It was, in every sense, a speculative bubble: an idea that drew in capital, labour, and hope, only to burst under its own weight. The gold bubble of the 1970s A century later, gold again became the stage of mania. When President Richard Nixon closed the “gold window” in 1971, ending the dollar’s convertibility, bullion was suddenly free to trade. The 1970s were marked by oil shocks, political scandals, and inflation that climbed into double digits. Fear pushed investors into gold. The price surged from $35 an ounce in 1971 to $850 in January 1980. Dealers reported queues stretching down streets; households pawned jewellery to speculate. Then the air came out. Under Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker, interest rates were raised to nearly 20 percent to crush inflation. Gold collapsed, losing half its value in a year, and spent decades in the wilderness. For anyone who bought at the top, it was financial devastation. It is hard not to see the rhyme with Bitcoin’s arcs: euphoric climbs, inevitable crashes, the many burnt to ash, while a few emerge rich. Calling something a bubble is not the same as proving it worthless. Gold endured the Gold Rush, the 1980 collapse, and every boom-bust cycle in between. It remained an asset not because it never bubbled, but because its story — of permanence and scarcity — survived each implosion. Bitcoin’s path looks the same. Yes, it is prone to manias; yes, its price is narrative-driven. But this is how societies test new stores of value: by rushing in, burning out, and returning if the story still compels. Inside the house, bubbles are a warning. Outside the house, they can be the crucible in which belief hardens.Source: © 2025 Digital & Analogue Partners 5 Criminal Use The fifth sceptical charge is moral: Bitcoin, critics say, is the money of criminals. Ransomware gangs demand it, darknet markets thrive on it, and regulators fret about its role in money laundering. Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz once declared that Bitcoin “ought to be outlawed,” precisely because it seemed designed to escape oversight and law. But here, too, the history of gold casts a long shadow. The pirates’ prize In the seventeenth century, the Spanish empire sent great treasure fleets across the Atlantic, carrying silver and gold from the Americas to Europe. These convoys were irresistible targets. In 1628, Dutch admiral Piet Heyn intercepted the entire Spanish “Silver Fleet” off Cuba, seizing treasure worth millions of guilders — enough to finance a year of war against Spain. Pirates, privateers, smugglers: all knew that gold and silver were the perfect loot. Anonymous, universally accepted, impossible to trace once melted down, they were the original bearer assets. Looted gold in wartime The same qualities made gold the currency of state crime. During the Second World War, Nazi Germany systematically looted the gold reserves of occupied nations. Coins and bars were melted, recast, and laundered through neutral Switzerland. After the war, U.S. investigations revealed how central banks in “neutral” countries had quietly absorbed bullion stolen from treasuries — and in some cases from the teeth of victims. Gold’s aura as a safe haven did not stop it from serving as the currency of plunder. Bitcoin and the digital outlaw Bitcoin has inherited the same suspicion. The darknet marketplace Silk Road, shut down by the FBI in 2013, relied on it. Ransomware groups demand it because it crosses borders instantly, without banks. Like gold doubloons in a pirate chest, bitcoins in a hacker’s wallet carry no name or serial number. Yet, just as with gold, criminal use is only one layer of the story. Most transactions in gold were not piracy; most Bitcoin transactions today are legal. But the shadow clings. If criminal use alone disqualified an asset, gold would never have become the foundation of central bank reserves. What once paid pirates and funded dictators became the bedrock of finance. The pattern is clear: the same anonymity that offends regulators can, under new conditions, become the very reason for trust. Bitcoin’s critics are right: it has been used for crime. But stepping outside the house, we see the larger rhythm. Assets that embody scarcity and portability are always attractive to both outlaws and states. What begins in the shadows often ends in vaults. The question is not whether criminals use Bitcoin — they do. The question is whether the story of digital scarcity proves strong enough that, like gold, it outgrows its outlaw phase and becomes a pillar of the legitimate system.Source: © 2025 Digital & Analogue Partners 6 Regulatory Risk The last charge in our matrix and also the one I have to address as a lawyer working with crypto, usually, is the bluntest: states do not share power. When money collides with sovereignty, the law usually wins. “Hand it over”: the American spring of 1933 In April 1933, amid bank runs and a collapsing money supply, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 6102. It did not argue with gold; it seized it. Americans were ordered to deliver their gold coins, bullion, and gold certificates to the banking system by 1 May 1933, save for narrow exceptions (industrial/art uses; small personal amounts; certain collector pieces). Willful hoarding could bring up to 10 years in prison or a $10,000 fine — a staggering assertion of the state’s claim over the pre-eminent store of value. (The American Presidency Project) Congress then made the architecture permanent. The Gold Reserve Act of 1934 transferred ownership of all monetary gold to the U.S. Treasury and revalued it from $20.67 to $35 per ounce, devaluing the dollar and ending routine redemption. Gold did not disappear; its role did. (federalreservehistory.org) Why it matters: if a democratic government under stress could outlaw private hoards and rewrite the dollar’s metallic link, then “regulatory risk” isn’t a debating point. It’s monetary history. “Temporarily… forever”: August 1971 to Jamaica 1976 On 15 August 1971, President Richard Nixon went on television and announced a “temporary” measure: the U.S. would suspend convertibility of dollars held by foreign authorities into U.S. gold — the famous “closing of the gold window.” That one line broke the spine of Bretton Woods. Within a few years, the world rewrote the rules: at Kingston, Jamaica, in January 1976, IMF members legitimised floating exchange rates and formally de-monetised gold in Fund law. Gold remained valuable, but no longer as money by treaty. (federalreservehistory.org, IMF eLibrary) Why it matters: even the most entrenched monetary arrangements can be edited by pen and policy. Markets follow. Today’s split screen: ban or domesticate In September 2021, China’s central bank and nine state agencies declared crypto transactions illegal and deepened the crackdown on mining and trading — a sovereign veto, plain and direct. (The Library of Congress) Across the Channel, the European Union chose the opposite path: integrate and supervise. Its Markets in Crypto-assets Regulation (MiCA) — adopted 31 May 2023 and rolling into force through 2024–2025 — creates a licensing and disclosure regime for issuers and service providers; the Commission has already issued 2025/305 regulatory technical standards for CASP authorisations. In Europe, the state’s answer was not “no,” but “under rules.” (EUR-Lex) Regulatory risk cuts both ways. It can erase a market (China) or confer legitimacy (MiCA). Either way, it moves the future. The lesson is not that law always kills what it touches. Roosevelt’s order did not make gold worthless; it repositioned it. Jamaica did not end gold’s story; it changed its function. So too with Bitcoin. If our civilisation truly values digital scarcity — records secured without kings, vaults, or clearinghouses — law will, in time, channel that belief into institutions. If it does not, the law won’t need to ban it; indifference will. Inside the house, the warning stands: policy can redraw the map overnight. Outside the house, the deeper truth returns: where collective belief settles, law usually builds the walls.Source: © 2025 Digital & Analogue Partners Conclusion Six charges, six stories. No intrinsic value, volatility, inefficiency, bubbles, crime, or regulation. Each of them is true of Bitcoin. But each of them was also once true of gold. Keynes sneered at it as a barbarous relic. Bryan thundered against it as a cross of suffering. Roosevelt outlawed it. Nixon uncoupled it. Pirates plundered it, Nazis looted it, prospectors bankrupted themselves chasing it. Gold was inefficient, volatile, prone to criminal activity, and politicised. And yet, it endured. The point is not that Bitcoin is destined to be gold. The point is that the verdicts of economics are always delivered inside the house: by the rules of stability, utility, supervision, and productivity. They are good rules. But sometimes civilisations shift, and the walls themselves move. Philosophy’s role is to stand outside the door and ask: what if the terms have changed? What if the store of value in a civilisation of metal and empire was gold, but the store of value in a civilisation of data and networks is digital scarcity? What if bytes, not bars, are what we now choose to guard? This does not mean Bitcoin is immortal. Assets rise and fall with the beliefs that animate them. Gold once fell from money to commodity; one day, Bitcoin may fall in turn. But if it does, it will not be because it never paid a coupon, or because its price chart looked like a bubble. It will be because our civilisation itself has moved on again, to new symbols of permanence. So the question is not whether Nobel economists are right or wrong. Inside the household of their discipline, they are right: Bitcoin fails the tests. But outside, looking through the window, we glimpse something they cannot measure. That is belief itself — the force that makes shells, metals, paper, or code into money. Belief is not the enemy of value. It is its engine. And where belief settles, law eventually follows. Gold proves the pattern. Whether Bitcoin will follow is the story our own civilisation is now writing. Will Bitcoin Be Worth Zero in Ten Years — or Not? was originally published in Coinmonks on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story