How Governments Subsidize Bitcoin’s Usefulness and the Bitcoin Price

Bitcoin Core contributor, Peter Todd, was recently interviewed on Bitcoin Uncensored by co-hosts Chris DeRose and Joshua Unseth. Ethereum, The DAO, private blockchains and many other topics were discussed but DeRose turned the conversation toward an often-discussed concept (at least on Bitcoin Uncensored) near the end of the show: The idea that governments essentially subsidize the usefulness of Bitcoin and the bitcoin price through their various regulations.
Bitcoin Fulfills a Need in the Market
There are many types of applications that people want to build with blockchain technology but only a minor fraction of these projects have found any use in the real world. While there are plenty of techno-geeks who think it’s cool to play around with various cryptocurrencies and blockchain-related projects, Bitcoin seems to be the only blockchain system that has seen use outside of those who are tech-savvy.

This post was published at Bitcoin Magazine on Jun 30, 2016.