THE SCEPTICS have plenty of fodder. The earliest adopters of bitcoin, the original cryptocurrency, used it to buy drugs, while cyber-hackers now demand their ransom in it. Hundreds of millions of dollars of ether, another digital money, were stolen this year after hackers found a bug in some code. Many “believers” are in reality trying to get rich quick from the global mania that has seen the value of cryptoassets reach $2.2trn. Others are freakishly devoted. The entrepreneur who announced in June that El Salvador was adopting bitcoin as an official currency sobbed on stage, claiming it would save the …
