Bitcoin: More than Money

On August 6, Judge Magistrate Amos Maazant of US District Court for the Eastern District of Texas made many a headline when he became the first known US government official to declare that Bitcoin -- the non-government and non-bank currency, payments network, and anarchic digital phenomenon -- is indeed money. In a ruling rejecting a defense argument that a certain Ponzi scheme was not in fact a Ponzi scheme because its shares were sold in Bitcoins, instead of "real" money, Maazant made a declaration that bitcoin is a currency or form of money, and investors wishing to invest in the scheme provided an investment of money. Meanwhile, until the invention of Bitcoin, online digital payments had to rely on trusted third parties, such as PayPal or Visa,to keep a ledger of account-holder balances, or a record of who owns what. Without such ledgers, digital money could be spent twice.