Bitcoin turns 10 this year, but there’s not much to celebrate. Its price has tumbled to near $4,000, down 30 per cent in a month, 50 per cent in six months and almost 80 per cent since December.
The crypto-currency experts, who clearly didn’t see this coming, are blaming all sorts of temporary culprits — from jittery markets to “hard forks” (blockchain jargon for radical technical changes in a digital currency.) But they’re kidding themselves. This is a long-term unravelling of all of the lies, exaggeration and populist fantasies that drove last year’s market mania.
Bitcoin was meant to make all of