Page 1: Invented in 2008, Bitcoin is not the first attempt at an all-digital, cryptographically based currency. Others have existed in one form or another for nearly fifty years, but have either failed to take off or dramatically crashed and burned. Bitcoin is the first cryptocurrency with the deep structure, wide adoption, and trading momentum to achieve escape velocity. In practice, Bitcoin blends credit cards' ease of digital transfer with the relative anonymity of a cash handoff. Like all currencies, the problems it poses are both practical and metaphysical; like cash or credit, Bitcoin is somehow both more and less real than the goods it is traded for. Until now, the most well-known of these goods have been illegal drugs, like those on Silk Road. But the drug marketplace's shutdown gives Bitcoin a chance to gain some much-needed legitimacy.
Page2: Bitcoin's future potential was a hot topic last year at emTech, an MIT conference on emerging technologies. In a panel hosted by MIT Technology Review's Tom Simonite, MIT economist David Johnson and BitPay CEO Stephen Pair discussed Bitcoin's complex relationship with paper currencies, credit, and state authority. Johnson noted that buyers and sellers, banks and governments all care deeply about what money is used for. Money's use carries associations of value, which in turn helps establish whether a currency, a payment form, and a social model for transactions are legitimate. "It's hard to bring any of them on board if the money is associated with behaviors consumers are troubled by," Johnson said at emTech. "The key to the legitimacy of the system for all of these parties is to establish that people using the system are acting legally and responsibly."

Page3: There are a little over 11.78 million bitcoins in circulation, with a total capitalization of 1.6 billion USD, and typically somewhere between 50,000 and