History is full of failed attempts to establish new currencies. So what makes crypto different?

By Hiroki Shin, Associate Professor of History, University of Birmingham

The confusion and commotion over cryptocurrency often reminds me of the 19th-century German drama Faust. In Goethe’s masterpiece, the devil Mephistopheles offers an emperor the tantalising vision of limitless wealth through the printing of paper money.

The emperor grasps the idea (unheard of at the time the play is set), and the magical wealth which paper creates brings brief prosperity to his troubled dominion.

But what appeared to be an inexhaustible source of value soon proves illusory. A combination…

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