Bitcoin for Undergrads, Wall Street’s Next Pump-and-Dump

The story was everywhere last week: MIT undergraduates will each receive $100 in Bitcoin when they arrive on campus next fall. The gift comes thanks to an affluent donor and two precocious student entrepreneurs — one a sophomore computer science major, the other a first-year Sloan MBA student and president of the MIT Bitcoin Club. The coverage was predictably gee-whiz. Read more

The Paper Chase

The recent speculative euphoria on Bitcoin has been accompanied by a wave of media reports on cryptocurrency, most of which seem to assume that the existence of non-government-issued currency is unprecedented. In one sense, they are correct and Bitcoin certainly is something new: Of all the alternative and local currencies that have circulated in the U.S. and beyond, none of them have ever connected so many geographically distant individuals ... Read more

In each other we trust: coining alternatives to capitalism

At last, an international project is starting to take shape to research and experiment with concrete alternatives, laying the groundwork for a world in which the means of production are held in common and both the form and creation of money are subject to direct-democratic control by newly empowered communities of users. Read more