I decided to attend the dinner about Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies after having seen so much about them in the news and on social media and yet still being in a position of confusion about what the actual underlying technologies are and why there is so much hype. I walked out with still a crude understanding of these so called currencies. To me, this seems like a strange Silicon Valley brain child that was cooked up in some basement and subsequently released and deified by the public–most of whom seem to be prospectors. The original concept was largely utopian–to create a currency that was decentralized and thus free from the constraints of banking corporations and the mettling of governments. I honestly don’t see something like Bitcoin ever coming near to such a reality in the foreseeable future as the coin itself can best be described as volatile. I can see the intrigue of purchasing some of the commodity (which is literally nothing but some 1s and 0s believed to have value–arguable somewhat in the same boat as any other currency not backed with another commodity like gold), but I would only do so in the same way I would purchase a lottery day or place a bet at a casino. Cryptocurrency seems to be the “in thing” right now–something novel and cryptic from the depths of Silicon Valley–but I wouldn’t bat an eye if the entire experiment implodes as prospectors realize they are buying nothing more than an idea believed to have some tangible value. The currencies have all grown at unsustainable rates, and a correction is bound to happen in the near future. Despite this, the promise of a decentralized currency is bound to attract interest for years to come. Will the idea prevail? Only time will tell.