While rumors that the US government might attempt to shut down Bitcoin have existed for years, it has only recently emerged that government officials in the US actually approached the issue of shutting down the currency’s operations in the early part of this decade.
According to a recent article in Forbes Magazine, the US attorney’s office looked into investigating the cryptocurrency as recently as 2012. Those efforts stalled, and the prosecutor directed to investigate Bitcoin ended up teaching a cryptocurrency class at Stanford Law School.
For anyone who has followed the storied rise of Bitcoin, however, this turn of events is unlikely to come as a surprise. Once seen as a countercultural alternative to traditional currency investments, support for Bitcoin became the de facto cause of a young, tech-savvy group of investors keen to revolutionize the marketplace.
As stories about Bitcoin gained traction in US media circles in the early 2010s, however, members of Wall Street’s financial establishment began to express a keen interest in exploring the currency’s investment potential.
Indeed, the recent news about the government’s stymied investigation into a possible Bitcoin shut down is just one more thorny chapter in the history of the embattled currency. Since its introduction to investors ten years ago, Bitcoin has achieved a near-mythological status in the public imagination.
At the height of the currency’s value, each “coin” was worth over $16,000, and for investors who “bought in” when each coin cost only a few dollars, the results were astonishing: Many early Bitcoin investors ended up becoming millionaires practically overnight, and a handful of investors became billionaires.
But as a digital currency that rivaled the US dollar in its potential for investment growth, it is little wonder that Bitcoin once attracted the ire of federal investigators. As the currency attained legitimacy with old-guard investment houses, however, it is clear that prosecutors couldn’t make a case for a shut down.
While Bitcoin is currently enjoying a second wave of popularity among investors in the US and abroad, it remains to be seen whether the currency will regain the dizzying heights of its glory days.
To be sure, Bitcoin has brought the world of currency speculation to a new generation of investors and analysts. The risky world of investing is unlikely to ever be the same, but many of Bitcoin’s most ardent supporters wouldn’t have it any other way. Perhaps that is the currency’s greatest legacy.
Dil Bole Oberoi
